Batya
by grandSolovey
Summary: Andrew Ryan discovers the existence of his son much earlier than Fontaine had intended, and the course of Rapture's history is irreversibly redirected. But for each altered variable, some constants yet remain unchanged.
1. Prologue

**APRIL 28, 1958**

Frank Fontaine had been killed on an otherwise uneventful night just a few days prior. In that time since, Andrew Ryan had yet to feel any cause for celebration.

He visited the detention center under cover of night, and one more time he traveled into its dimly-lit depths, past empty cells and prisoners bound for Persephone. The thick-cloaked and heavily armed security officer at his side said not a word. He knew better than that; the exact knowledge of why Andrew Ryan was making this visit, however, was far above his pay grade.

Angry chattering echoed from the furthest cell down the hall. It wasn't quite the sound Ryan would expect to hear in this place. But that hardly mattered now.

Beyond the bars of the cell sat two of the scientists previously in Fontaine's employ. The source of the chattering was the tall Asian man, ranting in tirades against the state of this place and how he was being treated and _don__'t they know who he is?_, while the woman accompanying him seemed not to notice or care. But both of them took notice when Andrew Ryan stood in front of their cell.

"Dr. Tenenbaum. Dr. Suchong."

His voice was curt as he looked to each of them in turn. Then he looked to the guard, and did not speak again until after the man had left.

"Explain to me what was that..._thing_ I found in your laboratory."

Tenenbaum looked away. Suchong, on the other hand, made a low chuckle.

"That _thing_ just might be the crown jewel of scientific advancement in Rapture," he said slyly. "In the world—in all human history, maybe."

"It's yours," said Tenenbaum, voice flat, gaze fixed on the wall.

A wave of revulsion swept through Ryan at those two words. He fought hard to keep it from showing through the expression on his face.

"What do you mean, it's _mine?_"

"Your genetic material, of course." Suchong seemed only too willing to answer. "And that woman Jolene's, but that is no matter. Fontaine insisted. Genetics is key in Rapture, but Ryan genes are king."

Ryan couldn't fight back an angry twitch of his lip at the mention of Fontaine.

"And what use, pray tell, did Fontaine have for my genes?"

"A failsafe," said Tenenbaum. Suchong scowled at her interruption, but didn't try to interject. "To slip past your genetic locks, make use of your Vita-Chambers, should he ever have need of it."

"Not that it would ever _need_ a Vita-Chamber," said Suchong with a scoff. "It is much too strong for that, Suchong is certain. There is not even the slightest possibility that—"

"What use did Fontaine intend for this creature?"

In truth, Ryan already had a strong hunch as to the answer. He took Suchong's sudden silence and newly averted gaze as mere confirmation.

"Of course..." Suchong removed his glasses, looking at them instead of Ryan. One of the lens had been cracked in the fray that resulted in the scientists' arrest, but he continued to wear them as if nothing had ever happened. "The use Fontaine intended may not be the same use that _Ryan_ intends. Yes, Ryan can put any use to it that he likes."

The wave of revulsion took him again. "If you're implying that I would have _any_ use for Fontaine's would-be assassin, then you're deeply mistaken. No, it will be destroyed at once."

Suchong squawked and sputtered before he could make a proper reply. "Destroyed? Do you have any idea how many years of work are in that thing? Destroy it and you will waste everything Suchong has done, everything _worth_ doing—"

"And why shouldn't I destroy it?" Ryan raised his voice over Suchong's, stopping him cold. "Should I keep it around and wait for it to stick a knife in my back instead? That's what you built it to do, is it not?"

Again, Suchong sputtered. Tenenbaum answered for him instead.

"It was programmed to respond to a trigger phrase. Anything it is told to do, it will do."

"Ah—yes, the trigger phrase." Suchong, having apparently recovered, spoke with a sly voice again. "All Ryan needs to do is say three little words and the creature hops right to it... It would even kill Fontaine, if Fontaine were not already dead."

The existence of a trigger phrase didn't exactly sweeten the pot in Ryan's mind; if anything, he found the idea repugnant. A child of his own flesh and blood incapable of answering to his own free will... No. No, it would not do.

"Can it be removed? Deprogrammed, if you will."

Suchong scoffed again. "You are joking, yes? Without the trigger phrase, what would be the point of it all?"

Ryan turned to Tenenbaum instead. "Can it be removed?"

Tenenbaum still didn't turn to him, but her eyes flickered downward before she answered him. "Some of the imprints... The memories Fontaine had us implant in its mind, perhaps they can be removed, or replaced. But the trigger phrase is too deeply rooted in his subconscious mind to be easily removed."

"Yes, very deep," said Suchong with a nod. "So deep, it has no idea it's even there. Very useful, if you ask Suchong."

"I don't, nor do I care to."

Whether it was _deeply-rooted_ or not made little difference to Ryan. If anything, he was now even more convinced to put it to rest.

"I believe we're done here," said Ryan, and he turned to leave.

"Wait, _bitte._"

Tenenbaum spoke with more fortitude than she had before, and that was enough to make Ryan stop and turn back. She looked at him now, and that same fortitude shone in her eyes as well as her voice.

"Perhaps we can make a compromise."

* * *

**DECEMBER 31, 1958 — 11:52 PM**

The Kashmir Restaurant, as in years past, was positively the place to be on New Year's Eve. The band was swinging, the drinks were flowing, the dance floor was jumping, and Diane McClintock sat alone with a cigarette in her hand.

She didn't know what she expected, of course. How silly she was to think that Andrew would spare a single night for her—at least, by her second drink and third cigarette of the evening, she was certain that was what _he_ thought. She could hardly remember a time when he agreed to spend any time with her outside the bedroom, and even that had seemed too long ago. At this point, even that seemed like too much to hope for.

She looked upwards, above the heads of the masked revelers and gleeful dancers, past the glittering gold statue of Atlas and his terrible weight, through the great glass window and the towering buildings beyond. The city swayed as if moving to the beat of the music; its shimmering lights illuminated the dark waters of the Atlantic deep, casting its gleam on a school of fish that flickered by.

Rapture was just as beautiful as she had ever been. But that beauty was little consolation to Diane. All it did was remind her of how beautiful her own life used to be.

She had never expected being in love with the founder of Rapture to be an easy task. It had been the greatest thing in the world once, when her days were filled with pleasure and joy. But she had never imagined it would ever be this difficult, much less that her love would ever falter.

So it was with a heavy and bitter heart that she reached for her drink, a new and yet-untouched flute of champagne. "Let's have a toast to Diane McClintock..."

In that moment, a hand closed over hers and an unseen voice spoke in her ear: "You mean the most beautiful girl in all of Rapture?"

The voice startled her, but only in its suddenness. She stared with wide eyes as Jack Ryan slid into the seat beside her, with a sly grin on his face all the while.

Then she scowled.

"You're lucky I didn't slap you, Mr. Ryan."

"Please, Diane, how many times do I have to ask you to call me Jack?"

There couldn't possibly be enough times, not in Diane's mind. Jonathan A. Ryan, known to the rest of Rapture as Jack Ryan, the twenty-something-year-old son of Andrew Ryan and sole heir to his wealth and legacy, wouldn't ever be more than _Mr. Ryan_ to her, not as far as she was concerned.

"I suppose your father sent you here, did he?" With anyone else she might have made an attempt to mask the bitterness in her voice, but not with Jack.

"Why, not at all. I'd heard he made a date with you for tonight, but when I saw him still working in Hephaestus, I figured you must be all alone. So here I am."

It was almost enough to make her laugh. "Please, Mr. Ryan. I don't need anyone's pity, least of all yours."

His brow lifted, though not quite enough to make him look truly taken aback. "There's no pity here. Why would you think that?"

This time she did laugh. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that you couldn't possibly have anything better to do with your time? I'm sure there are plenty of girls just lining up around the block for you, so whether Andrew sent you or not, I can promise you that you don't need to waste any more of your night with me."

"That's not true, Diane."

Hearing her name shaped by his voice—low and resonant, just the sort of voice that would seduce any other girl, surely, but not _her_—rankled her more than it should have. "What is it, then?"

He glanced down, smoothed out the tablecloth beneath his broad hand. "Well, if you want me to be completely honest with you..."

"I do."

He paused, then looked up to meet her gaze. It was in moments like these that Diane, for all her thinly-veiled contempt for the man, couldn't help but be struck by his similarity to his father. His face wasn't as narrow as Andrew's, nor were his features quite so gaunt, but there was a piercing quality in his dark eyes that echoed his father's in a way she couldn't quite ignore.

"Ever since I first came here, I can't help but feel like you've had some kind of grudge against me."

Jack had her there. In her defense, she found it difficult _not_ to hold a grudge against him, or even against Andrew for bringing him down here. For as pristine and beloved as his public image among Rapture's social elite had ever been, there had always been mutterings of Andrew making his hypocrisy plain, breaking the one law he had set forth himself—_no contact with the surface, not under any circumstances_—just to bring a bastard son into his city. (And how could he be anything but a bastard, if no one had ever heard of him before now?)

But that wasn't quite the reason Diane felt such ill will towards him. That would be the conversation she'd had with Andrew some few short weeks before news of Jack's arrival came to light, when she had suggested bearing his child and heir herself.

It had all seemed far too convenient at the time, and it still did even now. Convenient for Andrew, that is.

Still, when Jack confronted her with the truth of it, it seemed maybe the tiniest bit irrational. But before she could answer or explain herself, he went on.

"Now, you have to understand, normally I wouldn't let such a little thing bother me. I'm not that sort of man, to get all worked up just because one person doesn't like me. But it does bother me to think that _you_ don't like me, Miss Diane, or that I've done something to offend you somehow."

That just made her feel even more rankled. "And why is it so important that _I_ like you, Mr. Ryan?"

"Well—maybe it sounds a little sentimental, but..." He moved his hand to cover hers again; she barely managed to tamp down the urge to snatch it away. "You're important to my father, whether he shows it or not. So that makes you important to me, as well."

That struck Diane more than she would have cared to admit. Jack smiled, as if he'd noticed the rising color in her cheeks.

"Besides, no one should have to be alone on New Year's Eve."

The dancing stopped, the band leader said something over the microphone, and the band struck up a drum roll in preparation for the countdown. At that she managed to come back to her senses, at least a little bit.

"You're a charmer, Mr. Ryan," she said with a slight huff, "just like your father. But you won't be able to run this city on charm alone."

"_. . . Eight, seven, six . . ."_

"I'm well aware of that," he replied, his smile spreading into a grin. "But a little charm doesn't hurt, does it?"

"_. . . Three, two, one!"_

There was a loud _bang_, then another, and another—balloons crowded upon the ceiling high above began to burst one by one, sending showers of multicolored confetti swirling down through the air. Golden streamers crisscrossed the air and settled in drapes over great Atlas's shoulders as the band played _Auld Lang Syne_.

"Come on, now. How about a dance?"

Jack was standing now, extending one of his hands to her. If it weren't for the fact that she hadn't danced all night, Diane might have felt more strongly about refusing.

Then again, if it weren't for the words Jack had just spoken to her just minutes before—or if it weren't for how eerily like his father he seemed now, tuxedo-clad and standing tall, framed by the light of Rapture's finest gilded glamor as though it had been made just for him—she might not have even considered accepting.

Diane pursed her lips at him, but there was hardly any use in fighting a smile like his. She fished a piece of confetti out of her champagne, knocked it back, and took Jack's hand as daintily as she could manage.

"If you think you're getting a midnight kiss, Mr. Ryan, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed."

He only laughed and said, "We'll just see about that."

Jack swept her into his arms, and she damned her lovesick heart, for she couldn't help but feel that he might just be right.


	2. Father & Son

**MAY 7, 1959 ****— 9:02 AM**

Well over a year had now passed since the death of Frank Fontaine. Well over a year was plenty enough time for Andrew Ryan to celebrate, and yet not even once had he found any occasion to do so. Celebration was remarkably difficult, after all, when he found himself presented with one of the complications that arose from the man's death nearly every single day thereafter.

In past years, he might have been inclined to think of any child, particularly any child of his own, as merely that: a _complication_. But Jack had proved a far greater complication than he could have ever imagined. Perhaps that was to be expected, owing to his being something more than a mere child of his own—either a marvel of science or a freak of nature, depending on which way he was looked at, custom ordered and engineered to a T as though he were some kind of machine.

He might have had the shape of a man when Ryan had found him, but in reality, Jack had been far less than that.

Ryan hadn't thought it possible for him to hate Fontaine any more than he did while the man was still alive. But the sight of what his child had become—no, the very _thought_ of his own flesh and blood having been twisted into such a state, corrupted and malformed into a puppet designed to obey Fontaine's every whim... That thought was one that repulsed him. It enraged him.

In the end, however, it spurred him to do the only thing that could truly spite Fontaine and his memory: to salvage something of worth from the sad lump of flesh he left behind, to shape it into a man who could rightfully bear the name and legacy of Andrew Ryan.

Jack had done well so far. But only time would tell if he could truly succeed...if he could truly become capable of standing as Ryan's heir.

"_Mr. Ryan, your son is here to see you."_

The secretary's voice filtered through the PA speaker on his desk, breaking through Ryan's thoughts and reeling his attention back from wherever it had wandered off to. It was becoming an uncomfortable habit as of late, one he couldn't seem to shake.

Perhaps the prospect of anniversaries was making him unnecessarily contemplative.

He shook his head to no one but himself, shaking the thought out of his head. He pressed the PA call button to respond.

"Send him in."

Ryan didn't look up from his work again until the hiss of sliding doors announced his son's arrival. Jack settled into one of the seats opposite Ryan's desk, smoothing a hand down the front of his navy suit jacket and looking very much like he was trying to look anything but uncomfortable. The effort didn't count for much.

It was something Ryan had come to expect, of course. If Rapture was the cathedral then Central Control was the monastery, and this office its cloister, lifting praise to no god but rather the spirit, ingenuity, and determination of mankind alone. Rare was the man who could face down the founder of Rapture in his deeply-vaulted, highly-vaunted hall and retain the specter of comfort and ease. That was the way it had always been; that was the way it should always be.

Fontaine had been one of those men, Ryan recalled with some bitterness. He wasn't yet decided on whether it was good to see that Jack, apparently, was not.

He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands together, and cast an appraising eye over his son.

"What news do you have?"

Jack leaned back as well—a gesture that may have been in mimicry of his father, or an attempt to put himself at ease, or both—and crossed his legs at the knee. His brow lifted just the slightest amount, as though meaning to convey some nonchalance. "Nothing you don't already know about, I'm sure," he said with further nonchalance. "Not as far as the city's concerned, at least. The economy's never been stronger, and from what I hear, people have never been happier."

Ryan couldn't be sure whether he really hadn't heard any differently or if he was choosing to gloss over any evidence to the contrary for his father's sake. He'd been hearing plenty of it himself: rumblings of dissent in Apollo Square, demonstrations in Dionysus Park, even reports of _charity_ in the slums beneath the Atlantic railway. He'd been naive to think that silencing Sofia Lamb would have done anything to quell what parasites remained in his city. With the way things appeared to be progressing, Jack would have to work as tirelessly as he himself had done to protect Rapture from their insidious reach.

But would he be up to the task?

He sighed deeply, exhaling through his nose. "And what about yourself? What do you have to report?"

Jack shifted in his seat. It seemed he didn't have an answer prepared for this one.

"I'll be going to see Dr. Tenenbaum this afternoon."

Ryan waited half a moment for Jack to go on. He didn't.

"It's been three days since we last spoke like this, _sin moj._ Do you mean to tell me you've done nothing worth reporting in that time since?"

For the past few decades, perhaps even longer than that, Ryan had not considered his "mother tongue" a language to be used lightly. But it was his blood and nothing else that tied Jack to him when he was first found, and if Jack would ever be a worthy heir to his legacy, he would have to be bound to him more deeply than that.

"Nothing that would interest you, I'm sure."

"Tell me."

Jack lifted a hand to his face and dragged it down his mouth before it rested at his chin, in something almost like a pensive gesture. All it accomplished was making his nerves plain.

"Well... There was a gala in the Tea Garden. My presence was kindly requested."

Ryan frowned. "What was the occasion?"

"Rededicating the park, or something like that. I suppose they've had some recent luck in quashing the Saturnine."

He did know something to that effect. He'd signed off on the security order himself.

Speaking of which...

"Why your presence and not mine?" Not that he would have accepted, of course. This was merely a test.

Jack shifted again. He looked like he might have been sweating.

"You're a difficult man to get a hold of, you know—except for me, I mean—on account of how terribly busy you've been as of late. I suppose they figured they'd have better luck in asking me to attend, seeing that I'm nearly as much of a public figure as you are."

That he was. Ryan sighed again. Maintaining a positive public image was an important quality for the future leader of Rapture; there was no denying that. But this was not quite what he had in mind.

"Do you remember why I ordered your creation, _sin moj?_ Tell me."

Jack grimaced, no longer making any attempt to mask his unease.

"To carry on your legacy, _batya_."

It was this language that bound Ryan's son to him more inextricably than anything else, a language shared by them and not a single other person of consequence.

"Was it to attend parties and carouse with socialites?"

"I am only doing the best that I can, father."

"Answer me, _sin moj_."

Jack winced.

"No, _batya_."

"Was it to spend my wealth as you please, or to wine and dine my mistress behind my back?"

Jack swallowed, visibly paler than before.

"No."

Ryan's voice remained even and calm, not rising a single decibel above his normal speaking tone. He was well aware of the effect he could have with strong words and a piercing gaze alone, and it was just that effect he wished to impress upon Jack now.

"Remember your birth, _sin moj._ It was by my will alone that you exist today, and by my will I can end it just as easily. It would take nothing for me to start anew should you fail to meet my expectations."

It would never have sat right in Ryan's mind to lie to his son had he not chosen to think of such lies as mere half-truths instead, truths halved only out of pure necessity. Jack knew only as much of the truth surrounding his origins as he ever needed to know, and Ryan made sure of that; he only knew exactly as much as was needed to keep Jack in line, to keep the cloud of Fontaine's memory from hanging over him and all that he did, and as far as Ryan was concerned, that was all he would ever know.

"Have I made myself understood?"

Jack nodded, keeping his gazed fixed on Ryan's desk rather than Ryan himself.

"Yes, father."

Ryan nodded as well, though more to himself given that Jack wasn't even looking at him. He paused to consider his next line of questioning.

"Why are you going to see Tenenbaum?"

Jack hesitated, then looked up again as he answered. "I have some questions about my, er...about my growth that only she can answer. That's all."

For a brief moment, Ryan wondered if his son had mastered the art of half-truths just as he had himself. But he saw no need to press him on the matter now. If anything, he could press Tenenbaum herself later on. Unless...

"You do know that any answers from her may not be forthcoming."

"I know. But it's worth a try."

Ryan nodded, again to himself more than anything else. He could trust Tenenbaum not to divulge anything to Jack that didn't need divulging. Perhaps he could think the same of Suchong, but the man had no business with Jack's development anymore. He had more important matters to mind, which Ryan had seen to himself.

"And what about tonight?"

Jack's brow furrowed. "What about tonight?" he repeated, as though he had no idea what he was talking about.

Ryan's stare was pointed. "You haven't made any plans with Diane?"

Jack stiffened at the question. He might have been bristling.

"No, I haven't."

Again, Ryan's thoughts turned to half-truths. But again, he decided not to press the matter.

"Very well." He broke his eyes away from his son for the first time since their conversation had begun. "That will be all for today."

Jack stood, and in his peripheral vision Ryan could detect a curt nod. "Thank you."

He didn't look up again until the door slid shut at his son's back. The boy was a terrible liar, but that alone wasn't enough to warrant any punishment or retribution. He hadn't yet proven himself truly capable of honoring Ryan's name, but he had yet to prove himself incapable as well. Only time would tell...

Ryan turned his attention back to one of the files on his desk. It was a report from Rapture security detailing a recent theft from one of their storehouses: weapons, ammunition, stores of ADAM and officer uniforms...

Perhaps the true test of Jack's character and capability would come when the city itself was tested by those who wished to see it fall. But only time would tell.


	3. Mother's Day

**MAY 7, 1959 ****— 1:36 PM**

The bathysphere slid smoothly, near soundlessly toward its next destination, gliding through the currents as effortlessly as the schools of fish that flitted across its path. The lights of the city shone through the bathysphere's small porthole, casting a deep blue-green glow on its metal-and-plush interior.

The size of the porthole was hardly convenient for sightseeing, but Jack enjoyed the sights anyway. He was always grateful for these private rides on the Metro, and in recent months had even mustered the will to wield his authority and request them specifically for this reason alone. Nearly ten years of isolation had done plenty to erode the citizens of Rapture's sense of wonder; marveling at the city's splendor with one's nose pressed to the glass was considered childish behavior, at least in the circles with which Jack most often associated.

Then again, perhaps that was appropriate. His physical age would certainly qualify him for childish behavior, if nothing else.

Sometimes Jack wondered if his father would treat him any differently if he were actually as old as he appeared. He wondered how different everything else would be, if he'd actually been a natural child of Andrew Ryan rather than something cooked up in a lab. He wondered what else might be missing in the time lost between them.

But there was nothing to be gained in idle wonder, his father had been quick to teach him. Such thoughts could be nothing more than that: just _idle wonder._

It was always better to turn his mind to questions that had a definitive answer, he felt, hence his journey to the Ryan Industries compound. Definitive answers were never guaranteed where he was concerned, he had long ago found, but as he had said to his father mere hours earlier, it was always worth a try. There was nothing to be valued in something one didn't have to work for, wasn't there? And that just made his questing all the more valuable, did it not?

He wasn't sure. It was one of those unsure things he couldn't ask his father, which seemed to be an ever-growing list. But he didn't pay it any mind.

No matter how unsure it made him, after all, he could always enjoy the view on the way there.

* * *

Tenenbaum's laboratory and office space was found in the large compound of Ryan Industries, a facility entirely separate from the rest of Rapture and entirely closed off to the public. Jack had never counted as merely one of the public, of course, not since his public debut nearly one year prior.

Despite that, Jack found some unexpected difficulty in passing through the security checkpoint. Once he had finally gotten through—of course they recognized him, the officers explained in apologetic tones, it was just that they needed to take some extra precautions today of all days—he noticed there seemed to be more guards present than he could ever recall before. A set of barricades blocked off the laboratory wing, where security officers crossed and milled about with looks of varying concern.

Under normal circumstances, Jack could expect to find Tenenbaum at work in the lab any hour of the day. But he supposed these were hardly normal circumstances.

He'd be better off checking her office, in that case.

Up the lobby stairs, winding around until he found her floor, and then a knock at her door with the hope that she hadn't gone home for the day...

"Come in."

He entered, but ventured no further until the door slid shut behind him. Tenenbaum's office was a modest affair: small, sparsely furnished, dimly lit, and featuring a single porthole window that had no view of the city but rather a vast expanse of craggy seafloor.

(The seafloor was never quite so awe-inspiring to Jack as the many lights and intricate spires of Rapture's glory, but it was still interesting to him in its own way, and this compound was the only place in the entire city where he felt he could safely get a good look at it. Life teemed in the cracks and crevices that surrounded the building, from gently swaying fronds of seaweed to brightly colored starfish and other creatures he didn't know the name of scuttling about, over, and between the algae-covered rocks. The water was too murky and dark to see too far past the outermost boundaries of the compound, but sometimes he could see a mysterious light shining in the distance, far from the direction of the rest of the city.)

It was by this window that Tenenbaum stood, gazing out into the green-blue depths with a cigarette in hand. She still wore a lab coat despite the evident lack of lab work she was doing, and her mouse-brown hair fell in loosely-curled waves about her weary face. When she looked at Jack, it was with the same detached look he had seen her give everyone else in her presence.

"_Guten tag_, Mr. Ryan."

Jack nodded in reply. "Hello, Dr. Tenenbaum."

He knew better than to attempt to persuade her to call him anything else, as he usually did with the fairer sex. He learned long ago that there was to be no arguing whatsoever where the doctors Tenenbaum and Suchong were concerned. The mere thought of doing so caused a twist in his gut, a pang of primordial fear that echoed back to the murky depths of his earliest memory, depths too great for even the brightest light of his conscious mind to fully penetrate.

Tenenbaum gestured wordlessly for him to take a seat as she took her own behind her desk. He had to pull up a chair from the corner of the room to do so, but did so without conversation or complaint.

"Is there a reason why you need to see me, Mr. Ryan?"

Jack gave her a small shrug in an attempt to seem as casual as possible. "I just paid a visit to my father this morning. I thought perhaps it would be prudent to see you as well, as long as I'm out and about."

One of Tenenbaum's eyebrows rose a nearly imperceptible amount. It was as much of an expression of disbelief as Jack had ever come to expect from her.

"No reason at all?"

"None in particular."

She continued to eye him as she took a long drag off her cigarette, exhaling in white plumes that illuminated the relative dark of the room. His only response was to shift in his seat. Tenenbaum made him nervous, but hardly in the same way that his father made him nervous. Andrew Ryan intimidated him like no one else could, and he missed no opportunity to ensure that things remained that way; Tenenbaum, on the other hand, was nearly impossible for Jack to read or understand. For a woman so integral to his creation, Jack knew almost nothing about her, much less how to get what he wanted from her.

Her line of sight drifted below his before she spoke again. "Were you wearing _that_ when you saw your father?"

It took him a moment to realize what she meant by _that_: a boutonniere of red carnations pinned to his lapel. "Oh— No, actually, I wasn't." Would his father have disapproved? The thought hadn't even occurred to Jack. Nevertheless— "I stopped by the farmer's market before coming here. The vendors were very insistent upon my buying one."

"Hmm." Jack wasn't sure if the sound was dismissive or contemplative. "Is it real?"

"As a matter of fact, it is." Silk flowers were in abundance, of course. There was little room and hardly enough sunlight in an underwater city to cultivate the real thing, at least not for commercial use. But... "They're selling quite a bit of them now, actually—real flowers, I mean. Something about the season."

"The season?"

"A holiday, really. Mother's Day."

Tenenbaum's eyes met Jack's again. He could only guess that she now saw the true purpose behind his visit.

"Americans," she said, scoffing, and focused on her cigarette again. "Rapture is its own city, and it always has been. But leave it to fool Americans to push their own customs upon the rest of us anyway."

"It's not as though celebrating it is against the rules, though, isn't it? After all, it's not a religious holiday," said Jack, maintaining as casual a tone as he could manage. "If anything, it's a purely capitalist affair. You have to admit, there aren't too many of those."

"I have to admit nothing." She looked at Jack again, this time with a hard look in her eyes. "Why are you so interested in this Mother's Day?"

Jack had expected her to cut to the heart of the matter sooner or later. Nevertheless, he found himself needing to swallow down his nerves before coming out with the truth of it.

"I only thought it might be nice if I could see my own mother for the occasion."

Her eyes narrowed.

"And by that you mean...?"

"My _real_ mother."

The clarification seemed to mollify her, though not by much. She took another puff on her cigarette, her eyes not leaving Jack all the while.

"Your father forbids it. You know this."

"I do know. But I think I should at least have a right to know who she is."

"Your father would disagree."

"I don't care."

"It is his decision to make, not yours."

"Why should it be?"

The hard look was back in her eyes before she answered him.

"You know I cannot defy your father. You should not defy him either, Jack. You should know better than this."

_You should know better._ Those words stung him, no matter who said them. It stung him to hear her say his own name in such a way. All it did was remind him of the child he truly was.

"Please, Dr. Tenenbaum. I don't even need her name, just—give me a hint, or where she is, or..."

"I cannot."

There was a finality in her words that Jack knew he could not sway. Jack felt a churning in the pit of his stomach. He knew he'd get no further like this.

"Very well." It was all he could do to not heave a sigh as he got to his feet. "I apologize for bothering you, Dr. Tenenbaum. I'll be taking my leave now."

He turned to leave, and had nearly reached the door when...

"Wait."

Jack turned once again, only to see Tenenbaum in what looked like an intense bout of concentration. She stood after a moment, then retrieved something from a drawer in her desk, then made her way to a file cabinet in a corner of the room.

"There was a robbery—I'm sure you noticed, _ja?_" She unlocked the cabinet with the small key in her hand as she spoke. "Thieves got in through the emergency access tunnels. Made a mess of the place." She looked through the files, pulled one out, then shut and locked the cabinet drawer again before crossing the room to where Jack stood. "It seems they managed to infiltrate my office as well."

She held out the file, a nondescript manila folder, in a plaintive gesture. Jack could hardly believe it. He felt like he could kiss her right there and then.

"Dr. Tenenbaum, thank you—"

"Thank me for nothing," she said curtly. "This document was stolen, remember?"

"Of course," he quickly answered, taking the file and tucking it into his belt, where it would be hidden by his jacket. He very nearly thanked her again, but thought better of it soon enough. "Goodbye, Dr. Tenenbaum."

Tenenbaum only nodded in reply, and went back to her desk as he finally exited her office. Jack felt a remarkably light spring in his step as he made his way back down the stairs and back to the Metro station, despite the terrible weight of the secrets now tucked safely against his side.

* * *

**MAY 7, 1959 — 7:15 PM**

Diane had had quite enough nights of sitting alone by the telephone for one lifetime, thank you very much. Sitting alone in her parlor with nothing but a book and a half-emptied bottle of cheap Rapture-produced chardonnay to keep her company wasn't much better, perhaps, at least not in the grand book of social mores or whatever other cosmic scale there may be. But she certainly found one preferable to the other.

She had learned something from her dalliances with Andrew, something she'd first realized years ago and still remained true to this day: never count on a Ryan to keep any promises to anyone but himself. She felt like a fool to have ever believed the same wouldn't apply to his son. Even so, the both of them had an incredible amount of work ahead of them, and oftentimes it seemed that the younger Ryan had an even greater task before him: to learn the ins and outs of Rapture as well as his father ever did, to become as well-respected among the people as his father ever was, and to keep his nose clean all the while.

But still it stung her to feel forgotten by either of them—by both of them, really. She knew it was selfish. At times, however, times such as this, she didn't really care.

_Well, to hell with the both of them!_—was what she thought, in that moment at least. Then she heard the doorbell buzzing for her attention.

She was wary of answering it, but couldn't bring herself to ignore it. So it was with a heavy sigh that she got up to answer the door, and it was with a sense of simultaneous relief, disappointment, and expectation that she found Jack Ryan, bouquet in hand, standing at her doorstep.

"Hello, Diane."

She pursed her lips at him, hoping her expression conveyed just how sour she felt in that instant. "You're late, Mr. Ryan. By about twenty-four hours."

"I am?" He looked confused for a moment. Then realization crashed over his face like waves upon the shore. "Oh—Diane, I'm so sorry. You have to understand, I had to change my plans—"

"And you couldn't bother to let me know?" Diane huffed out a laugh. "Try better next time, won't you?"

"Diane, wait—" Jack wedged a foot across the threshold before the door could slam shut on him. "I _am_ sorry, truly, please believe me—look, I brought you flowers."

The bouquet of bright red and white flowers at his side was hard to ignore, even less so when he held it close to her face. Ordinarily she wouldn't have paid it any mind—silk flowers were a dime a dozen in Rapture, after all, and she'd received plenty of them—but the scent gave her pause.

"Are these real?"

"Of course they are."

"Oh..."

Damn her foolish heart.

"Please, Diane, won't you let me come in? Just let me explain."

She looked up at him again, trying her best—but perhaps failing—to look stern. "All right, Mr. Ryan," she said while stepping back. "But just long enough for you to explain yourself."

"Of course." He stepped inside after her, handed her the bouquet, and waited for the door to shut before he spoke again. "It was my father, you see."

"Your father?" She arched an eyebrow; if it weren't for her hands being occupied by the flowers, they would have been at her hips. "What, did he have you working too late to come see me?"

"No... No, nothing like that." There was a slight furrow in his brow and he cast his eyes downward as he spoke, and Diane took notice. He never did that unless he was truly being honest. "I think—I'm fairly certain, at least... He knows. About us, I mean."

Diane's eyes widened. She might have loved the man dearly once, but there was always a small part of her—as surely as there was in any citizen of Rapture—that still feared Andrew Ryan. "He knows?"

"At least he thinks he does. That's why I had to change my schedule: to throw off his suspicions."

"Did it work?"

"I can only hope so."

She looked down at the bouquet, carefully brushing a finger over one of its white flowers. The fan-like petals were cool to the touch, and their scent was delicate, yet earthy; it reminded her of the flower box in her mother's kitchen so many years ago, of the sunlight that poured in through the window and baked the linoleum floor.

"Of course..." Jack took one of her hands in his own. "I'm here now."

Perhaps if Diane was feeling any less heartsick, she might have sent him on his way again. Then again, she sometimes felt she never had any chance against a Ryan's charm.

"Then I guess you're just in time," she said with some slyness as she moved to set the flowers aside. She began to shrug out of her dressing gown as she went, just enough to expose her shoulders, bare but for the straps of her negligee. "I was just about to retire to the bedroom."

Jack wasted no time whatsoever. He came in from behind to kiss her shoulder and the crook of her neck, and he deftly untied the sash at her waist to caress the silk underneath, to cup her breasts and gently massage them in his hands, just as his lips found just the right spot that she liked.

"Oh, Jack..."

Perhaps it was selfish of her all along to expect a Ryan to love her. But moments like this made her selfishness more than worthwhile.


	4. Briefing

**MAY 24, 1959 ****— 4:28 PM**

The volcanic vents and network of massive, endlessly-pumping pipes that surrounded Hephaestus never failed to tinge the great glass windows of Central Control with a constant red-hot glow. Ryan kept his gaze fixed beyond the glass, watching pockets of air bubble up past the steel panes, striving endlessly upwards as though reaching for the surface in vain.

"Are you sure you don't want the rest of the council briefed on this, sir?"

Ryan folded his hands behind his back. "The council has no authority in this matter, Sullivan. Just give me the report."

"Right." Sullivan knew better than to argue. He was dependable for that. "We've had five different robberies in the past three weeks, all of them large-scale, all of them targeting places connected to you or to Ryan Industries. It looks like the thieves have been using the emergency access tunnels to hit all of 'em."

_Thieves._ The word burned in his mind like a simmering hot coal, stoking the quietly growing fire of his fury. The thought of any thief in his city, let alone one so brazen as this, was simply unbearable.

"Other than that, there doesn't seem to be any connection between the incidents."

Ryan knew that much, from his own reviews of the individual reports. He also knew that such a conclusion hardly meant there was no significant connection to be found between them. These thefts were not random incidents fueled solely by greed, weakness of will, or hatred against him—no, there was something coordinated and deliberate in this.

He only needed to discern to what end they were coordinated before he knew which course of action would best be taken.

"What was stolen?"

"That depends on the location." There was a rustling of papers as Sullivan searched for the details. "From our armories they took weapons, uniforms, boatloads of ammunition, and we'd been keeping some ADAM in there too... When they hit Fontaine—er, I mean Ryan Industries, of course, they took just about everything they could that wasn't nailed down. Including scores of ADAM." More rustling. "Seems like every place they hit, they cleaned out whatever ADAM or plasmids were being kept there."

On its own, such a theft could have easily pointed to splicers. But a series of such thefts was too coordinated for a group of junkies to accomplish, Ryan was certain, particularly any junkies who were so deeply addicted to ADAM that they needed such great amounts to get their fix. He doubted that splicers could have been involved in this at all.

"Food, too—some of the storehouses had been keeping canned goods and the like, or they were selling 'em. Totally cleaned out."

This new piece of information made the picture in Ryan's mind just a little bit clearer. If these thieves weren't stealing ADAM for their personal need or use, it was hardly likely that they had that much need or use for that amount of food, either.

"And last night... We got reports that somebody tossed Fontaine's old place, the penthouse in Olympus Heights. We're not treating it as a related incident just yet, though."

"It very likely is related," said Ryan. "If these thieves are intending to benefit by taking from my wealth, it only follows that they should take from the wealth of others as well...even if those others are now deceased."

Sullivan was silent for a moment, perhaps contemplating Ryan's conclusion for himself. "All right. I'll advise the boys to take a closer look."

"Be sure that you do." Ryan turned his head just enough to see Sullivan in the corner of his eye. "Was there anything else?"

"Well..." Sullivan seemed to hesitate, but he never hesitated for long. "To be frank with you, sir, that theft from the armory really put a hurting on us when it comes to dealing with those splicer goons. Seems like they're just getting worse by the day."

Ryan frowned. It did certainly seem that way, for all the progress he had made in stamping out the influence of the parasite and preserving the sanctity of his city. But it wasn't a matter he would need to concern himself with much longer.

"If there's anything you could do to help us out—I don't know, give us greater authority, or more resources, or put some regulations down—"

"Rapture will never be a city of regulations," Ryan said sharply, raising his voice for the first time since their conversation began. "The people of this city are of a stronger sort than that. They have no need of our interference to tell them what they can and cannot do."

There was a pause.

"With all due respect, sir... It looks to me like there are some people in this city who do."

Ryan bristled. "Their numbers are few and thus inconsequential. I will not have our ideals betrayed to cater to their weakness."

"Again, with all due respect..." Sullivan's tone grew ever more cautious; he knew full well that this line of conversation was not unlike tiptoeing through a minefield. "Maybe they're inconsequential to folks like you and me, but there's plenty of other folks for whom there's plenty of consequences. There's an awful lot of innocents out there getting mugged and killed by junkies looking for their next splice."

Ryan took a deep, fuming breath before he made his reply.

"The parasites will sort themselves out, given time." Then he turned to face Sullivan. "But there is a solution in the works to speed along the process. I would strongly advise you not to concern yourself with the matter any more than is deemed necessary."

"Yes, sir." Sullivan nodded quickly. "Of course, sir. Sorry for, uh, for speaking out of turn."

"It's quite all right, Sullivan." There were few who could speak so freely in such a way to the founder of Rapture, and the chief officer was one of them. "Tell me when you've made any further headway on your investigation. More importantly, find wherever these parasites are keeping everything they stole."

"Of course."

At that moment, the two-way radio at Sullivan's belt crackled to life.

"_Officer Sullivan? Come in, Officer Sullivan."_

"Excuse me—" Sullivan stepped back, features hardened, to take the call. "This had better be goddamned important."

"_You're meeting with Mr. Ryan, aren't you? He needs to know that his son's been detained."_

"What—" He made the mistake of looking directly at Ryan then. It was a mistake he quickly corrected. "What happened?"

"_It's nothing serious, just—"_

Ryan didn't want to hear it. "Send him to me. Now."

* * *

Sullivan was already long gone by the time Jack made his way to Central Control. Ryan waited for his arrival in the innermost chamber of his office, staring down the great machine that held the keys to his city. He waited until he heard the hiss of the door as it slid open and shut, then the sound of his son's footfalls upon the tiled floor.

"Would you care to explain yourself, Jack?"

Even without looking at him, even before hearing him speak, Ryan could sense the anger and defiance rolling off him in waves. It was to be expected, after all.

"There's nothing to explain, father."

Ryan turned then, only to see the anger barely contained in his son's face. Just as he expected.

"What did you do?"

"Mind my own business, and nothing more than that."

He did not immediately counter, but instead stared Jack down. For once, Jack didn't seem to recoil or wilt under his gaze.

"Is that the truth, Jack? Tell me."

"I did nothing wrong."

"Tell me what you did, _sin moj._"

Jack's upper lip gave the slightest twitch before he finally answered him.

"I went to Eve's Garden."

At those two words, Ryan's blood ran cold.

"And?"

"And nothing. Security ejected me as soon as they saw me on the premises."

If Ryan had been seated, this news might have driven him to put his head in his hands; as things were, he could already feel a throbbing in his temple. But he stood before his son and it was this way he must remain, to ensure he maintained his upper hand. Jack needed no further opportunities to flout any defiance of his father's authority.

"You know that you're forbidden from that place."

"Why?" Jack's anger hadn't abated in the least. "Why _that place_ and nowhere else, huh? What's so special about Eve's Garden that you'd have a standing order to kick me out on sight?"

Ryan could see where this was going, and it filled him with a fury like nothing else in this miserable day had managed so far. He would have thought that the people of his city, let alone his own _child _would know better than to defy him like this.

"I will not have my son seen in the presence of dancers and whores," he said quietly, maintaining calmness in the face of the oncoming storm. He moved past his son as he spoke, making for the door to his office proper. "That is all."

"Is it really?" Jack snapped at his back. "Is that really all it is, or did you just want me out of there because one of those whores is my mother?"

And there it was.

Ryan stopped as the door opened, listened to it shut as he turned to face his son again.

"Who told you?"

Jack's hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"Nobody told me. I figured it out on my own."

"Tell me the truth, _sin moj._"

"That _is_ the truth."

The boy's voice was shaking. Ryan could drag no more of the truth out of him, if he was truly that determined to bury it. He would simply have to find it through other means. In the meantime...

Ryan took a step closer to him. "If you know this much," he said, his voice just as quiet as before, "then you know why you cannot go there. No one else must know what you really are, Jack—_no one_, not even her."

"I wasn't going to tell her about me," said Jack, evidently doing his damnedest to hold to his earlier anger, but now there was desperation straining through his tone. "I just wanted to see her."

"That risk is one none of us can afford and you know that. Perhaps she would never be able to figure it out on her own, but there are those with sharper wits who frequent that club."

"So what?" His desperation was plain now. "I don't have to see her there, I could—I could meet her somewhere else."

Jack's defiance was no longer restrained to raising Ryan's ire; now it was making him weary. "You cannot see her, Jack."

"Why _not?_" It was obvious that it was taking everything Jack had not to advance on his father. "Shouldn't a man have a right to see his own goddamn mother?"

Naturally, Ryan had nothing to hold him back from advancing on his son, and that's exactly what he did.

"You haven't yet proven yourself to be a _man_, have you?" He didn't need to shout to make his fury known; those words alone were enough to make Jack flinch and recoil. "Are you a man, Jack? Or are you merely a child who plays at one by defying his father's will, by grasping at power and authority which he has yet to rightfully earn?"

There was no need to demand an answer from Jack this time. The boy made it plain with his wilted posture and refusal to meet his father's sight.

Just as Ryan thought.

He turned to approach the door again.

"You will not go near Eve's Garden again, _sin moj_, nor will you approach Jasmine Jolene_._ Am I understood?"

There was no reply.

"Am I understood, Jack?"

"Yes, _batya._"


	5. Fort Frolic

**MAY 24, 1959 ****— 6:34 PM**

For all the troubles Rapture had faced under the specter of Fontaine, for its widening class divide and the ever-growing threat of splicer activity, no place in the city had retained its gleaming ritz and golden age glory like the grand neon-lit halls of Fort Frolic.

There was little question that the Fort's continued success had much to do with its blatant and unapologetic worship of the consumerist way, not to mention its appeals to the hedonistic nature of man, both often greater than in any other part of Rapture. Splicers were crawling in every corner of the city, sometimes quite literally, but it was easy to forget that your friends or family or favorite neighbor had gone tits-up over the blue juice when there was a new show to see or a beautiful dress to buy. Fort Frolic had no end of distractions to offer, from slots and tables to shopping arcades galore, from lounges where the liquor flowed freely to bars that catered to a refined clientele, from dance halls seating dozens in a row to clubs where the dancers would gladly take a patron or two to the back room for a private show. And if a little ADAM was needed to take the edge off—just a little, of course, not enough to end up like those junkies in the street—why, that could be found in the Fort just as well.

In the early days, before ADAM made its permanent mark on the city and its people, perhaps this place might have served as an unending well of distractions just as it did now—distractions from the surface world, from the life those first brave souls must have left behind. But it seemed unlikely that the Fort could serve well in this regard, given the arched glass ceilings that provided a constant reminder of their distance from the sun, of the ocean's terrible vastness and weight suspended so precariously above them.

At times, however, those great glass ceilings managed quite the opposite. Strollers and shoppers stopped at their leisure to look upwards with varied sounds and expressions of awe as the shadow of a massive whale drifted past. Children stopped their parents to point and shout _look, look!_ as its bellow swept through the panes and reverberated down to the very ground where they stood.

Jack was among them, standing idly in the atrium and staring up at the beast floating overhead. It was hardly his first whale sighting in Rapture, but it stilled him nevertheless. He wondered what would ever possess such a hulking creature to come so close to this city when it had such a vast expanse of open sea in which to freely roam.

He sometimes wondered what would have ever possessed a man to come to this city when there was such a wide world above the sea to inhabit and explore. Of course, such thoughts were often quickly quashed. His father's answers usually sated whatever doubts he might have had, and the mystery of it all no longer seemed quite so unfathomable when explained in his words.

Usually.

Could his father's beliefs have ever been flawed? The fact that this city stood at all, much less stood in all its glory, seemed to suggest the contrary. _One does not build cities if one is guided by doubt_—Jack had heard those words long ago, in one of his father's earliest lectures to him, and still they resonated deep in his mind. A Ryan could not afford to be guided by doubt. _He_ could not afford to be guided by doubt.

Yet it was doubt that kept him frozen even now. Perhaps it was doubt that kept him from ascending to the state of man in his father's eyes.

He stared at the entrance to Poseidon Plaza, just one set of stairs and a few short steps away from where he presently stood. The way to Eve's Garden lay beyond its steel door. He had a right to see his own mother, goddamn it. He was certain of that—no doubt had guided him to that decision.

Was he a man, capable of his own power and agency? Or was he a child, stricken with doubt and clouded by insecurity?

He began to take a step towards the entrance. His father's words echoed in his mind...

"_You will not go near Eve's Garden again."_

He stopped.

Those few words, echoes though they were, were all it took to bring him to a halt. They curled around his feet and bound him like shackles of shadow and air.

But that was absurd. Perhaps his father hadn't wanted Jack to defy his will, but would he want him to be so easily cowed, either? This could not stand. He took a step towards the door.

"_I will not have my son seen in the company of dancers and whores."_

His heart squeezed in his chest. The thought of going any further made him dizzy, then ill.

Before he knew it, Jack found himself stumbling backwards instead, to one of the benches that ringed the atrium. What a sight he must have been, or so he would have thought if not for the pressing need to clear his head. His father's voice flooded his thoughts, drowned out the sound of all else around him save the thudding beat of the blood in his ears.

"_Are you a man, Jack? Or are you merely a child who plays at one?"_

He was somewhere caught in between: Ryan's bastard child in the shape of a man, with none of the nerve or wherewithal to forge his own path in life.

Jack lifted his head—he couldn't remember putting it in his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into the sockets of his eyes, but there they were, and it was not without the slightest tremor that he pulled them away—and looked to the Poseidon entrance. His heart thudded.

He yanked his gaze away, to a display case in the middle of the atrium floor. A brightly-lit plasmid flask sat behind the thick, padlocked glass, and beside it sat a pristine syringe vial of EVE on a crushed velvet cushion, both softly aglow in shades of red and blue. _SANCTUARY: New from Ryan Industries — Try one today!_ urged a sign above the case, accompanied by a caricatured face with a wink and a smile.

The sign bore his name—his father's name, perhaps—but it was not for him. It was never for him. For as long as he could remember, Jack had been forbidden from the wonders of ADAM and EVE. He had no need to splice himself into something other, his father had told him. All that he needed to find his worth in life had already been etched into his DNA from the first moment of his creation. To defy that would be to make himself a lesser man.

_To defy_—was it his defiance in any matter that made him a lesser man, or was it in this matter alone? Would his father finally accept him if he obeyed his word down to the very last letter, or would he instead see him as incapable of his own determination after all?

His head swam. His heart thudded and his head swam and he could hardly think, could hardly even see straight anymore. He needed to leave this place, he decided. He needed to clear his head.

After but a moment of deliberation, he made one other decision: he needed to get himself drunk, and the quicker, the better.

* * *

Fortunately, he didn't have to go far to accomplish all three.

The cocktail lounge nestled into the corner of the atrium's lower wing was perhaps the most convenient of all Fort Frolic's distractions, being secluded enough from the hustle and bustle of the atrium itself while still within easy reach of the most popular shops outside Poseidon Plaza. It was also perhaps the only bar to be found in Fort Frolic that retained low traffic into the evening hours; there were many other clubs and bars to be found here, after all, all providing far more entertainment for the discerning taste of Rapture.

It was just the sort of place Jack needed. Or thought he did, anyhow.

He wasn't quite so sure if the scotch on the rocks was precisely what he needed—_on the house, of course_, the bartender had been quick to tell him with a flashing grin—but still he held hope that it would do the trick. The thud of his heart had already eased, given way to a soft and indefinable warmth in his chest and limbs. The liquor was already at work.

But still, something troubled him.

More troubling was the idea that he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was that troubled him. He didn't dare to point his thoughts toward their earlier tracks lest he fall right into them again, lest he undo all the work it had taken to build himself back to some semblance of ease. He could only trace the barest outlines of it, like hands fumbling at an object through cloth, feeling its shape yet searching in vain for its color, its scent, its taste.

In other words, it wasn't nearly enough. Perhaps that was what troubled him most of all.

Jack almost didn't notice the man who settled into the seat beside him. He didn't notice at all the sidelong glance the man gave him, nor did he hear him order the same drink; he was far too focused on the bottom of his glass for that.

"This stuff might be a little saltier than what they've got on the surface... But it still does the trick, huh?"

Jack wasn't sure what he meant by that. He'd heard many times the complaint of Rapture's liquor being watered down compared to surface goods, though of course he couldn't know the veracity of that himself; perhaps the man was making a joke along those lines.

"Not that I mean any offense, Mr. Ryan."

It didn't occur to Jack until that moment that the man was speaking to him and not the bartender. He lifted his head, getting a good look at him for the first time: dark hair, smile askew, young, perhaps his own age—his apparent age, at least—strong in the face and slight in build. Recognition flickered in the back of his mind, but a flicker was hardly enough for him to recall the man's name or significance.

"None taken." It was as safe a reply as Jack could manage.

"You're a good sport, you know that? Your old man would probably have me in a noose for something like that."

His father wasn't quite _that_ severe, was he? Hardly. Still, Jack felt no urge to defend his good name.

"Probably."

The man chuckled and sipped at his drink. Jack couldn't help but feel an odd sort of camaraderie with him, odd if only because of its rarity. By now he was more than used to the people of Rapture referring to him by name, praising him without provocation, striking up conversations as though they were lifelong friends when in fact Jack had never met them even once in his short life. Sometimes the attention was something for him to bask in, while at others it was wearying; now, though, it wasn't just attention he craved but also company, even if that company was a perfect stranger, as well as the distractions they provided.

"The name's Kyle, by the way. Kyle Fitzpatrick."

The flicker sparked into a flame. Kyle Fitzpatrick: one of Sander Cohen's so-called "disciples." Jack had been warned of the whole lot of them, but he couldn't quite remember why.

"The pianist?"

Fitzpatrick beamed. "That's the one. You've heard me play?"

"No, but..." The flame wavered; Jack had to think quickly to supply an alternate explanation. "I've heard you're quite talented—you're one of Sander Cohen's associates, right?"

The corners of Fitzpatrick's smiling mouth twitched just a hair. "Something like that."

Jack wondered if maybe he had touched a nerve. He didn't know much about Sander Cohen, had only heard snatches of his music and other performances over the radio and PA. His father had always seemed intent on keeping some distance between the two of them; Jack hadn't ever thought to question it.

"You should really hear me play," Fitzpatrick continued. "Sander doesn't have much of an ear for music anymore...unless it's his own, of course."

Jack laughed at that, for little reason other than it felt as though he was supposed to. He had long ago learned to adapt to social situations with ease, but this one in particular was one for which he still had little precedent.

"I think I'd like that."

Idle conversation. He had no reason to think anything more of it than that.

But Fitzpatrick seemed well enough appeased. He laughed and drank again.

"So, if you don't mind my asking..."

Jack's attention had begun to drift away again, back into fumbling at the corners of his mind, but at this he took notice. He wasn't sure just what kind of question this man might ask that he would mind.

"What's a fella like you doing in a place like this, anyhow? You'd think this part of the Fort would be a little dull for Rapture's golden boy."

The epithet made him inwardly flinch; the rest of it just made him stare back at his drink.

"I've got a lot on my mind."

It might not have been the entire truth, but it was as close to the truth as he could safely manage.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that..." Fitzpatrick leaned in close, as though speaking in conspiratorial tones. "But you know, I hear Fort Frolic is just the place to deal with that sort of thing."

Jack laughed again, though it was half-hearted. He didn't look up from his drink.

Fitzpatrick didn't laugh with him this time. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, softer than before.

"You know, I've got a place around here... Got my own piano, too."

Fitzpatrick's hand was on his thigh, all long fingers and flat palm pressing firm through the fabric of his trousers.

"I could play for you, if you'd like."

Jack could feel that warmth from earlier taking on a more definable shape, settling like a heavy weight in the pit of his belly. He looked up again, up to Fitzpatrick's half-cocked smirk, and nodded before he answered.

"I would like that."


	6. Diane

**MAY 24, 1959 ****— 9:44 PM**

Fighting McDonagh's, much less any other part of Neptune's Bounty, was hardly any place for a lady to be found on her lonesome. It was no coincidence then that Diane found herself there that night, as she was in no mood to act her ladylike best.

Her plans for the evening hadn't involved a grubby pub that stank of fish guts and cheap ale. Her plans hadn't involved her being alone, either. She felt no desire to be here, but then again, she felt no desire to spend her night in the company of Rapture's finest and no one else, not by herself, never by herself. She felt no desire whatsoever to be left alone among the wealthy few, left alone against the tide of questions and conversation that were meant not for herself but rather the men who should have accompanied her.

She should have known better. _Never count on a Ryan to keep any promises to anyone but himself._ Damn Jack, damn Andrew, damn the both of them to hell. Damn herself for believing otherwise. Damn her foolish heart, damn it all. She should have known better than this.

"'Scuse me, miss."

Diane gave the bartender a hard look. Most barmen knew better than to attempt any further conversation when that look was on her face. But then again, Fighting McDonagh's wasn't exactly like most of the bars she frequented.

"You sure you're in the right place?"

"Just get me a whiskey."

The bartender nodded and minded his own business after that.

Diane couldn't put a finger on what it was that drew her to Neptune's Bounty in particular. The place had always had a certain reputation about it, the docks being a haven for roughnecks and rumblers and other sundry fellows, and that reputation had only grown since Fontaine's rise and fall. It wouldn't do for a girl of her status to be seen in the company of working-class fishermen; it would do even less for a Ryan's mistress to be seen in the place where Frank Fontaine had been king.

But she'd been a working-class girl herself once upon a time, long before she'd been swept up by Andrew Ryan's charm—and she wasn't so certain she wanted to be a mistress of any Ryan for even a moment more.

The thought of leaving him—which _him_, she wasn't sure, but she didn't think the distinction truly mattered anymore—made her heart ache. So did the thought of staying behind while he continued to forget about her. She didn't know which would be more unbearable in the end. She didn't want to think about it. She wished she could know. She wished she could know without feeling, without needing to put herself in any deeper turmoil. But she knew that was beyond her now.

Somewhere deep inside her, though, she wondered if it was really the thought of leaving the Ryans in her life that filled her with such doubt. No man had ever made her feel this way before, so why should they be any different?

She wondered if it wasn't the thought of leaving them, but rather the thought of leaving behind whatever it was they stood for: the promise of a better life, the promise of a brighter future, the promise of carefree days where she knew not a single thing to worry over.

Why couldn't her life just go back to the way it was before—but without them? Why couldn't anything be like before—before Fontaine, before ADAM, before she ever knew the great Andrew Ryan as more than a name in the newspapers? She might even be happy to live here in Rapture for the rest of her days if it meant she wouldn't have to think about the man responsible for its creation, or the man responsible for its continuation, but that didn't seem possible. Nothing that could set her heart and mind at ease seemed even remotely within the realm of possibility now.

"Hey, ain't that Ryan's girl?"

She bristled, then turned. A swarthy, bearded man in slick waders was pointing at her with a fiery look in his eye. He didn't seem to be in a mood for pleasant conversation.

Any other girl might have been afraid to be singled out in such a crowd. There was no room in Diane's heart for fear, but rather anger and despair—and that despair had now left her, filled with indignation in its wake.

"So what if I am?"

Nothing in the man's countenance changed, though he didn't seem as though he was expecting any retort.

"So what?" He snarled and advanced on her. "So what the hell is Ryan's girl doing in a dump like this? He's got you sniffing around down here too?"

Diane tensed, acutely aware of the closing distance between them and just as acutely aware of the weight of the revolver that sat in her handbag. It was supposed to be her protection against splicers. She hadn't ever anticipated needing to use it; she wasn't sure if she could.

"Easy now, Billy. Think about what you're sayin'."

The interruption startled Diane to the point where she very nearly missed its source: another man coming to Billy's side, bracing a hand on his shoulder and standing just enough in his way to keep him from coming any closer to her.

It was enough to get Billy to stop, but he wasn't so easily appeased. "What's there to think about? Those sons of bitches tossed the whole inventory—that's a day or more's wages gone, just _gone_, you fucking know that—and people like _her_ still get to show her face around here?"

"Easy, _easy._" The other man now fully impeded Billy's path, having slipped between the two of them so easily that Diane wondered how she had missed it. "That's on Ryan and them, not her. She's got nothing to do with it."

"How do you know?" Billy shouted, suddenly pointing at Diane again. It took her a surprising amount of nerve not to flinch. "How do you know that for sure, huh? Who says Ryan didn't just send some skirt down here to find what Sullivan and his boys couldn't?"

"I say that," said the other man, firmness in his tone, "because there's no reason to believe it. Even Ryan wouldn't do something so foolish as that."

"But—"

"Go home, Billy. If it's a fight you're looking for, you're not going to find it with this lass."

She didn't seriously expect Billy to heed the man's words; if she expected anything at all, it was for him to sock the other man right in the face. So it was to her honest surprise that Billy retreated, defeat written plainly on his face, and slunk away.

The man watched him go before finally turning to Diane. "I'm afraid I'll have to apologize for him, Miss McClintock. It's been a rough few days for us all."

Diane appraised him with a wary eye. He was strong-built, like any other working man she'd expect to find down here, but he didn't share their usual get-up of grubby waders or stained coveralls. His clothes were downright pristine compared to the rest of the crowd, in fact, from the black shine of his boots to the flat cap perched on his head, and Diane found that both odd and striking.

But it wasn't striking enough for her to let down her guard. She'd learned at least a little something from her past mistakes, after all, and one could never afford to be too careful besides.

She let herself raise an eyebrow before she responded to him. "Tell me about it."

He gave her a rakish smile and settled into the stool next to her at the bar. Diane wasn't sure what to think about this progression of events, nor was she sure what to think about the fact that as soon as he sat down the bartender already had a drink for him, slid across the polished wood without a word between them.

"Trust me, Miss McClintock, you don't want to get me started." He drank without taking his eyes off her. "Though I've a feelin' your sort of rough is a bit different from ours."

"So what?" she snapped without thought or hesitation. She hadn't asked for the guy to defend her, and she certainly hadn't asked for him to play the courteous gentleman for her afterward. She was starting to feel fed up with the whole damn thing. "Just because I don't work in the fisheries all day doesn't mean I don't have problems, too."

"Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean anything like that." To his credit, he managed to refrain from copping a defensive tone. "Just that I have a hard time imagining what sort of problems any gal of Ryan's got to worry herself over."

He spoke with a thick, lilting accent, at its heaviest when he drew out the syllables of Ryan's name. The sound of that name alone would have been enough to make her irritation spike, but this was unbearable.

"Well, there's plenty, all right?" She wished she had a cigarette. "And I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that. I don't _belong_ to Ryan, thank you very much." She _really_ wished she had a cigarette. "At this point, I'd be glad if I could be shot of him for good."

She huffed the words out without thinking, but unexpectedly found she didn't regret them. It felt a little good, almost powerful, to finally vent what'd been plaguing her all damn night.

His brow rose at that. "Is that right?" he asked, as though it were difficult to believe. Were she in a more charitable mood, Diane might have sympathized.

"He never takes a single moment to think of anyone but himself—" Only then did it occur to her that she might need to be a bit more specific. "Him _and_ his son, the both of them. Always ready to act like they care, but only as long as it's convenient for them."

It almost startled her how easily her frustrations came tumbling out at only the slightest provocation. It almost startled her just as much to realize how little she cared. But it wasn't startling, not quite—it was thrilling.

"What a shame," the man said, shaking his head. "Ryan junior always seemed like a more agreeable sort than his father."

Diane gave a particularly unladylike snort. "He's no better than Andrew ever was. If anything, he's worse."

Then she found herself given pause. There was a sting in her heart, spurred by the thought of what Jack had once meant to her—what he still meant to her, perhaps, but she was determined now to push that aside.

"He's nicer," she murmured. "But niceness doesn't count for much when he's picking up his father's worst qualities."

"What a shame, what a shame." He shook his head again, somehow seeming genuinely morose. "No man should ever treat his lady with such carelessness, least of all a lady such as yourself."

Oh, no. No, no. Diane was not going to fall for this bit again.

She wasn't sure if a glare or a laugh would do better to discourage him, so she settled for some approximation between the two. "Don't even try it, mister. I don't know what kind of girl you think I am, but I'm not going to go home with you just because you saved me from getting into some trouble."

The man's eyes widened in a look of genuine surprise—somewhat to her own surprise.

"Is that what you think I'm after? Oh, no." His tone was purely apologetic now. "I just thought you could do with some conversation, that's all, what with the long face you had when you came in here and all. Besides..." He leaned in close. "After the scene Billy made, I didn't want anyone else to go on tryin' to start somethin' with you."

At first, Diane wasn't sure just how he could have made a difference in that regard. But as she paused to consider it, she realized that the hum of activity in the pub had quieted somewhat, the other men huddled together and keeping to their own affairs. When she cast a passing glance over the rest of them, only one looked in their direction, then quickly looked away again.

"I'm a man of some sway here, you see." It seemed he had detected her doubt. "Whatever I say goes. But I've still got to keep them in line at times."

Diane didn't know whether to feel reassured or far less than that with this new revelation.

"Well—" Whether she felt reassured or not, however, she knew she had to at least act with some confidence. "That's good to hear. But I'm still not convinced you're not aiming at something with all this."

He sighed deeply, then pulled the cap off his head. His hair was surprisingly fair, framing his face like an odd sort of halo in the tavern's dim light.

"I'm afraid you've got me there, Miss McClintock," he said softly. "I did want one thing... But only to be a friend to you."

"A _friend?_" Diane very nearly snorted. Did this guy really think she would fall for that? "In that case I don't know what to tell you, because I've already got plenty of friends."

"I'm not so certain you do. Why else would you be here?"

That hadn't fully occurred to her. But now the realization settled over her like an uncomfortable weight.

"Would you like to know what kind of girl I think you are, love?"

She didn't quite know how to respond to that. She only found herself wishing ever more dearly that she had a cigarette.

"I think you're an honest lass, no different from the rest of us honest men and women caught here in Rapture. But like the rest of us, you've been fooled by Ryan and his charms—fooled, taken advantage of, and thrown away when he had no more use for you."

She reached for her glass, but couldn't quite muster the will to make herself drink.

"What... What makes you say that?"

"You said it yourself, didn't you?"

Indeed she did. She felt the edges of something creep into her consciousness, something she couldn't yet fully grasp, like those first soft rays that heralded the dawn to come.

Then something else occurred to her.

"What's your name, anyway?"

* * *

**MAY 25, 1959 — 10:06 AM**

Jack couldn't remember when he had ended up back at his own apartment. He couldn't fully remember all that had transpired the night before. All he knew with certainty was that when he awoke in his own barely-disturbed bed, haphazardly dressed in his clothes from the day before, it was with tinges of regret and little else.

That troubling feeling had faded in the night, lost somewhere between the haze of alcohol and Fitzpatrick's slender hands, but now it echoed in his mind like the beat of a far-off drum. Nothing had been solved. He hadn't faced his doubts. Nothing had changed from before, and even if anything had changed at all, he had a growing suspicion that it was only to make things worse.

The thudding beat gained an acute sharpness in his ears before he realized the sound he heard was real: someone was rapping at his front door. It took some great effort, but he managed to gather himself well enough to stumble his way to the door and answer it.

Diane stood there waiting for him. The time it took him to fully recognize this fact was, as it turned out, just enough for her to slap him across the face.

"I'm through with you, Jack Ryan."

Jack reeled. There was nothing in his conscious memory to indicate that he'd ever been struck before, yet something in the blow rippled back to the deepest corners of his mind, sending waves of inexplicable fear echoing throughout his very bones.

When her words fully sank in, however, that fear took on a more easily definable shape.

"Diane, wait—"

"No, Jack." There was a fire in her eyes, like none he had ever seen before. "Do you have any idea how many times I've _waited_ for you? Well, I'm done. I'm not going to let you waste any more of my time."

His fear took the shape of a great precipice overlooking an interminable abyss, one from which there was no avoidance or return, and his grip on its ledge was slipping further and further with each passing second.

"Please, let me explain—"

"Aren't you listening to me? I've already told you, I'm _done._"

Sharp words echoed from the recesses of his mind, words meant for him long ago. The fading of his memory had blurred their meaning beyond recognition, but their weight and the feeling they carried remained ever clear.

"You're just like your father, you know that? And in none of the ways that matter. Some _prodigal son_ you turned out to be after all, huh?"

The thudding in his ears had returned. His heart squeezed in his chest.

"In fact, I wouldn't even be here right now if I had my way. But I met somebody last night, somebody who actually gives a damn about how I feel, and wouldn't you know it, the only thing he wanted from me was to give you this."

She thrust something toward his chest. His vision blurred before he could clearly see what it was.

"Jack— You're hurting me— Jack, goddamnit, let go of me!"

He had a viselike grip on Diane's wrist, where a small envelope was clutched in her hand. He couldn't remember when he had taken hold of it.

In that moment of startled realization, his grip loosened enough for Diane to wrench herself away. She glared at Jack with an even greater fury than before.

"I never want to see you again!"

By the time he fully remembered that he was standing on the ground, not falling into an unending abyss, Diane was gone. The envelope she left behind had fluttered to his feet.

His heart was still pounding; his head was still reeling. But somehow he gathered the presence of mind to pick it up and examine it.

His name, _JACK RYAN_, had been written across the front in small, precise block letters, with no quirks or characteristics of an individual hand to be found. When he opened it, he found the letter inside bore exactly the same style:

_I hope this letter finds you safely, as I don__'t yet know who will be its messenger._

_I haven__'t had the privilege of meeting you in person, but I can tell that you're a man of good character who only wants what is best for the city of Rapture and her people. However, I fear that the Rapture you know may only be a small part of what it has grown to be, and I fear also that this limited view may keep every citizen from having a fair hand on the Great Chain that guides our future._

_Would you kindly meet me at the Atlantic Express depot? There are many things I wish to discuss with you, all for the sake of furthering the glory of our fair city._

_P.S. You may want to dress down for the occasion. Be sure that you arrive by 11 P.M. sharp._


	7. The Depot

**MAY 25, 1959 ****— 10:43 PM**

The Atlantic Express had seen better days. Though the advent of the sleek and versatile bathysphere hadn't quite been the railway's death knell, business had never been the same since the Rapture Metro had erected a station in every major port of the city. Shoe-shine and newspaper stands stood empty, the platforms devoid of passengers and thus all potential customers. But still the trains ran as reliably as ever, usually making their stops on time.

Jack couldn't tell what it was about that letter that had drawn him to the place, but there he was, wearing a shabby coat and dull-colored ascot cap just as its author had suggested. Dissidents were afoot in Rapture's darker streets, dissidents and parasites who sought to undermine Rapture's glory for their own gain...or so his father had always told him. He'd never before had any reason to doubt him, so why should he doubt him now? Nothing rang safe or true in a request for a meeting in a place like this, much less one under cover of darkness; only the promise of a trap could be found in a letter like the one he had received, no matter how kindly its summons had been made.

At least, this was what the rational part of Jack's mind told him, over and over and over again but all to little avail. There was something inexplicable in the words on that page, something he could hardly fathom or describe, save that it and it alone had finally quelled the dissonance in his mind. The doubt that had been plaguing him for so long finally abated. Someone wanted to meet him, him and no one else, and speak with him—about what? About Rapture? He had no way of knowing, no way of doing anything other than hazarding a guess or two, but that wasn't exactly the most important part of it all, was it? Somebody wanted to speak with _him_, as though he was the only one who mattered—not his father, not the scientists, not anyone else but _him_.

In this anonymous letter-sender's eyes, he was a man of worth. Perhaps that wasn't true, he reminded himself—perhaps the sender had some ulterior motive, perhaps they sought to ply him with pleasantries before revealing the dagger beneath their cloak—but it was something he desperately wanted to believe.

So he stood on the empty platform and waited, not without some wariness, but also not without some hope in his heart.

"Right on time, Mr. Ryan."

The voice came from somewhere to his side, in the dim shadows of the platform's furthest corner. Jack wondered for a moment how he could have missed the man's presence; in the next moment, he realized this must be whoever had sent him that letter.

It wasn't quite so dark that Jack couldn't make out the man's features, but the brim of his flat cap obscured enough of his face that he remained on his guard; in addition to the cap he wore a coat just as shabby as Jack's, with a faded scarf threaded loosely about its collar. He didn't stand quite as tall as Jack did himself, and the strength of his build didn't seem quite so much that Jack couldn't overpower him if necessary, but something in the man's carriage, in the lines drawn by his form as he stood before Jack with his shoulders back, chin high, and hands squarely in his pockets, rang with a peculiar familiarity in the back of his mind. He tried to feel further for that familiarity, but nothing more turned up no matter how deeply he searched.

It was nothing at all like anything Jack had expected.

"I'm sorry, but..." He had to at least ask to be sure. "Have we met before?"

"Met?" The man shrugged. "Can't say that we have. Then again, I can't say that you haven't seen me at my work, either. I've done a fair amount of odd jobs around this city, wherever the labor was needed."

The idea was a sound enough explanation, Jack thought. But it didn't explain why, although he stood just a few inches below Jack's line of sight, he couldn't shake the distinct feeling that this man was towering over him.

It was too strange for him to question aloud.

"You know, I have to admit..." The man took a step forward, though Jack couldn't tell if it was the train or his own self that he was approaching. "I was a little worried you might not show up."

He spoke with a thick accent that took Jack a few moments to place: _Irish._ That was his guess, at least. His knowledge in that area was purely peripheral.

"I had to think about it."

That was a lie. As soon as Jack had finished reading the letter, he knew with certainty that he would end up here.

"Well, I'm glad you did."

The man smiled, and the warmth of it seemed not an inch out of place. Jack could feel his earlier wariness beginning to fade.

"What's your name?"

"Atlas," he said simply, drawing one of his hands out of his pockets and extending it towards Jack. "Just call me Atlas, Mr. Ryan."

Jack shook his hand. The solidity of his grip seemed only to compound the confidence in his stance, which once again made Jack feel as though there was something he was missing. After a moment of searching, it occurred to him that perhaps this man's confidence was something he himself truly lacked—something he truly aspired to.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Atlas." Just Atlas. "Now, would you mind telling me what we're both doing here?"

"Easy," he said in reply, looking not to Jack but rather to a clock that sat above the station's timetables. "We're at a train station, aren't we? Let's go for a ride."

Atlas began to approach one of the trains, taking easy strides. Jack couldn't help but feel some confusion; despite how obvious Atlas had made it seem, he hadn't expected to actually be going anywhere else tonight. In fact, it might have been the last thing he expected.

"Don't we need tickets?"

Atlas stopped mid-step to look back at Jack, brow raised. Then he laughed.

"Trust me, boyo. We won't be needin' any tickets for where we're going."

He didn't understand. But he felt no urge to do anything but comply.

Jack followed him into the train car without another word. He took a seat while Atlas stood, one hand on the rung and the other in the pocket of his long coat. They were just in time: the doors soon sealed shut, the whistle sounded off, and the train lurched forward, down the waterway and into the sea.

Once the train was safely submerged and steadily on its way, Atlas fished a cigarette out of his coat, then patted himself down as it hung from his bottom lip.

"Shite..." His eyes flicked up from his pockets to Jack's. "Hate to be a beggar, but would you kindly get me a light?"

Jack didn't hesitate to find his lighter, tucked away inside his own coat pocket, and hand it across the aisle to him.

"Many thanks." Atlas lit up with care, taking a long, slow drag and breathing out with what might have been a sound of relief. The lighter shone silver in his hands, bright amid the wisps of smoke and the soft blue-green glow from the windows of the car. "You're not an Incinerate man?"

Jack shook his head as Atlas passed the lighter back to him. "I'm not any kind of plasmid man, to be completely honest with you. Too, er... Too many side effects."

It was at least part of the truth, he thought. It was as much of the truth as he could manage, at least. But he wondered what made him feel even the slightest bit of reluctance over lying to this man.

"Mm." Atlas nodded with that affirmative noise, turning his gaze downward as he took a seat across from Jack. "I'm the same way, meself. I could handle an extra lump or two in the face, but then people start goin' mad, and then they start seein' _ghosts_... The only place any ghosts should be is right in the ground, if you ask me."

Jack only nodded in reply. He had learned long ago what people really meant when they said they'd seen _ghosts_ in Rapture: hallucinations of another life in moments previous, memories borne and shared by ADAM as it flowed from one set of veins to the next. It wasn't a process he fully understood, but then again, he was certain nobody but the scientists fully understood it either.

He considered it one of the grislier side effects of the gatherers' work. But that was a thought he would never dare to think aloud, and that thought was the most he would ever dare to dwell on the gatherers themselves.

"Have you ever taken the railway before, Mr. Ryan?"

The question was enough to shake Jack out of his thoughts, and he was grateful for it.

"I haven't," he said with a shake of his head. The only stops it made were places where Jack had no reason to be: a playground, a spa, seedy slums and the haven of his father's former nemesis. If there was ever a place in the city that Jack needed to visit, he could easily reach it by bathysphere.

"Mm." The sound was more thoughtful than affirmative this time. "I expected as much, to tell you the truth. The prince of Rapture doesn't seem the kind of man who's got much time to waste on the train...or in the places it goes to."

Atlas paused there to take another drag off his cigarette. The soft ember glow at its tip only intensified the quiet look in his eyes, eyes which didn't leave Jack for a second.

"But that's something I aim to change."

Before Jack could think to question what he meant, the train was cast into darkness as it entered another waterway, and then it began to shudder to a stop. Wherever Atlas was taking him, they'd just arrived.

"Hang on, boyo." Atlas stood first when the car doors opened, pulled the scarf free of his collar and handed it to Jack. "You'd best wear this. Wouldn't want people to recognize you down here."

Jack nodded and took the scarf without comment or complaint, wound it about his neck in such a way that he could pull it up to obscure his face, and tucked its loose ends into his coat. He wasn't certain why Atlas would bother with such a precaution, but he did have a vague inkling of an idea that told him not to question it.

"That's it," said Atlas, nodding his approval. "All right, come on. Just follow me and stay close; we'll have to walk a ways before we get somewhere safe to talk."

Jack followed him onto the platform and out of the station, just as he instructed. The walls here were grimier than the station they'd left behind, and the unevenly tiled floors were cracked and damp with seawater dripping from the ceiling. A crudely hand-painted sign soon greeted them: _PAUPER__'S DROP._

Perhaps Jack should have felt some more foreboding upon being led to such a place by a man who had until very recently been a perfect stranger. But he didn't, and while that in itself should have troubled him as well, he gave himself no quarter to question it. He tugged the scarf further up and took a deep breath. It smelled of cigarettes and ash, of gunpowder and steel, and of something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on or begin to describe, something that curled into the corners of his mind and settled into the darkest cracks of his memory, touching upon something too deep within himself to fathom.

He might have expected his earlier dissonance to return. But instead his mind felt calm—not at ease, not necessarily, but strangely still in a way he had never felt before as he followed Atlas into the Drop.


	8. The Diner

**MAY 25, 1959 ****— 11:36 PM**

"Watch your step, boyo. Wouldn't do to lose your way down here."

It was more easily said than done. Jack had heard some speak of this place, the slums beneath the tracks, but he'd never known what to imagine when they did. Now that he could see it for himself, he was no longer certain that anything he could have imagined would have been anything close to the truth.

He wasn't so sure that Atlas's warning to hide his face had been necessary after all, as no one they passed seemed interested in looking at either one of them. They huddled together or hurried past on the street, their faces twisted with ADAM and varying looks of grief. A body lay in the street; Jack couldn't be certain whether it was a corpse or simply spliced beyond recognition. He looked upwards to see Express cars suspended in midair, rusted from disuse. Above them was the ocean held back behind arches of steel and glass, just as it was in other parts of the city, but here it somehow seemed far grimmer, far closer, far more of a reminder that at any moment every last soul in this part of Rapture could be swallowed up and forgotten in the sea.

"_Good girls gather, gather, gather... Hurry up, Mr. B!"_

The voice was faint, sounding from some distance away, but its source was clear, made ever clearer by the loud, low, inhuman groaning that soon followed after it. Jack froze, save to look in its direction. A little girl, her dress in tatters and eyes aglow, merrily made her way down the street while a hulking, heavily-armored tin daddy followed close behind.

"Something the matter, Mr. Ryan?"

He heard Atlas speak, but failed to comprehend. The small gatherer clutched a giant needle as tightly and lovingly as if it were her favorite teddy bear. Perhaps that was all it was in her eyes. Theirs was not a mind into which Jack could find any insight, though he had often supposed he should. What more were they, after all, than creatures of science, twisted away from whatever life they might have had to best suit the necessity and glory of Rapture?

"Jack."

He nearly jumped when he felt Atlas's hand on his shoulder, but the solid weight of it was enough to bring him back to full awareness. He quickly shook his head. "Sorry, I just... I'm just not used to seeing them."

"Don't worry about it," said Atlas, and he glanced in the direction of the gatherer and her guardian without removing his hand. "Makes sense, after all. I can't imagine there bein' a great many bodies for them to harvest in your neck of the woods."

Jack shivered. He wasn't sure if it was due to the truth of what Atlas had just said, or rather the sensation that still lingered from dwelling upon them any longer than he should have.

"Come on, best not to pay the little ghouls any mind." Atlas's grip tightened as he moved to steer Jack in the other direction. "Don't want to be around when those splicers start makin' a scene."

Jack offered no resistance, letting himself be steered away just as he could detect shapes moving in the corners of his eyes, the shapes of people in the shadows beginning to stir. He didn't want to think about what was to come.

"Not far now..."

A low-roofed, pill-shaped building with steel siding and wide glass windows sat dead center in the grimy square ahead, and a flashing neon sign heralded its presence: the _Fishbowl Diner_. The bright lights reflected easily in the dark, seawater-slick streets, shimmering in waves with each step they took. Jack couldn't help but wonder just how much more of the sea could creep in before somebody did something about it; he wondered if that somebody would have to be himself.

It was in that moment that his earlier inkling of an idea now bloomed into realization. He knew now why Atlas had taken him here. He only wondered what Atlas thought he could accomplish that couldn't be done by approaching his father instead.

A lot, probably. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, but the idea both thrilled him and sat sickly in his gut.

Atlas was headed for the diner, and he held the door open for Jack to pass by before entering himself. The interior was dimly lit, and the only other person present was a woman polishing the counter.

"Sorry, boys, but we're closing up for the night—"

When she looked up to see the both of them, her eyes widened. Jack felt a stab of panic, for he knew that the look on her face was one of sudden recognition.

"Atlas!"

But, to his surprise, he wasn't the one she had recognized. Still, he tucked his face further into his coat and scarf just in case.

The woman abandoned her work at the counter to approach them, hands wringing. To Jack's slight relief, she remained focused entirely on Atlas. "What did you bring this time?"

"I didn't bring anything," Atlas answered, with a firm but gentle tone. "This isn't that kind of visit, love. I'm in need of some privacy."

"Of course—" Without any question or argument, she hurried past them to flip the sign on the door from _open_ to _closed_, then locked it. "Just let yourself out through the back when you're done," she called back to them as she gathered her things, and then she was gone.

_Just Atlas._ But this man wasn't really _just_ anything, was he? Jack had given him his trust so easily, which now seemed starkly illogical against his new realization that he really didn't know anything about him.

Atlas palmed a matchbook from the counter, settled into one of the booths against the far wall, and beckoned for Jack to follow. The table was stained and the seats were torn, but Jack sat across from him without hesitation.

"As you might have guessed from all that, I'm a man of some influence in these parts." He paused as he pulled another cigarette out of his pocket, then struck one of the matches to light up. The match head's acrid scent cut through the brine- and oil-thick air like a warm knife through butter. "And other parts, too—anywhere that the people are tired of being used and trodden upon by people like your father."

He couldn't help an instinctive bristle upon hearing his father spoken of in such a way. But with the bristle came a flare of confusion and, perhaps more pressingly, curiosity.

"What do you mean?"

Atlas cocked an eyebrow at him. "Did you even get a look at this place, boyo? People weren't ever meant to live below the train tracks like this, and now there are men like Augustus Sinclair makin' them pay _him_ for the privilege—and Andrew Ryan does what? He lets it happen, of course. Why, he doesn't do just that; he bloody well _encourages_ it."

Jack bristled again, this time at the thought of his father being drawn into this. "What is he supposed to do? People shouldn't have to live like this, I agree with you there, but my father's got nothing to do with it. If he were to try telling Sinclair how to do his business, why...that would go against every principle he has. That would go against the founding principles of Rapture itself."

"Ah, yes—our _founding principles._" Atlas leaned back in his seat, taking a long drag off his cigarette. "The Great Chain is guided by our hands, aye? But what happens when one man's got a stronger grip on it than anyone else? Will the rest of us be left to hang? Every man should raise himself up and make his own worth, but what happens when none of us are even given the chance?" He leaned back in his seat, flicking ash to the floor before he continued. "People are dying for those principles, Jack. _Rapture_ is dying for them. Ryan can stick to 'em all he likes, but all he'll end up doing is drive his city right into the ground—even more than it already is."

_More than it already is._ It hadn't occurred to Jack that Rapture was in as poor sorts as Atlas seemed to imply. He'd only been around for a year or so, true, but all that he had seen in that year had indicated nothing but growth and success...hadn't it?

_However, I fear that the Rapture you know may only be a small part of what it has grown to be . . ._

Maybe Atlas was right. Maybe he was more right about things than Jack wanted to believe.

He shook his head, struggling to remember his father's lessons. "If— If people really wanted... Everybody in Rapture has the same opportunity as anyone else. It's what they do with that opportunity that matters."

"And what if people can't do a damn thing with their so-called opportunity? Assuming that opportunity really is there at all."

He grasped at his memories, only to feel them slip through his fingers like rivulets of water escaping through the cracks of his cupped hands. So many times had he gone over his father's philosophies, so many times had he practiced saying them aloud, but in the face of true resistance, he felt like little more than a child mimicking words without truly comprehending them.

"It's there—it's always been there." Jack swallowed hard. "The opportunity's always been there, since the very first moment they decided to come here. Rapture _is_ their opportunity."

Atlas stared him down, taking another drag off his cigarette without once looking away.

"So what kind of an opportunity was Rapture for you, Jack?"

He froze. His cover story had been put to the test before, but never under quite so much duress as this.

"I... I came down here at my father's invitation." Usually that was enough to put any questions to rest. "He wanted to pass on his legacy to me."

"And that's it? You dropped everything, cut every tie you had on the surface to move to the bottom of the bloody ocean because...why? At the request of a father who'd never been around for you, never so much as acknowledged your existence to the public eye before then?"

Jack felt the cool edge of the table digging into his palm before he realized he had begun to grip it. There was a growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, one he had a feeling he could not avoid.

"Why wouldn't I? Rapture was..." He looked away, finding it oddly easier to focus on the napkin dispenser than continuing eye contact even a moment longer. "The way he made it sound, it was a paradise of free will. He had built this great city all on his own, and he wanted me to be a part of it. I would have been a fool to turn him down."

"Is that right..." Jack couldn't see the look on Atlas's face, but he heard him make a clucking noise with his tongue. "Is it, Jack? Is that what you really believed?"

"Of course it is."

"If that's what you insist, then I'm afraid I'll have to disagree."

Jack looked at Atlas again, feeling his dread sharpen into something like fear.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I don't believe that _is_ what you believed—not ever."

His heart squeezed. "I don't..."

"Do you believe anything else your father ever said—I mean really, _truly_ believe it with your heart and soul?" Atlas paused to lean in close and lower his voice before he continued: "Or do you only believe it because Andrew Ryan built you that way?"

There was a ringing in his head, a high tinny whine above the pounding in his ears. Jack wondered if this was what true panic felt like.

"I don't know what you mean." The words came slowly to him, tumbling from his mouth like heavy weights, but Jack forced them out anyway. He had to maintain his cover above all else; he had to at least try.

"I think you do. At least a little, but I'm willing to bet a lot."

Jacks knuckles were white against the table's edge.

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

Atlas gave a short sigh, then leaned back in his seat again.

"My boys and I, you see, we paid a little visit to Fontaine Futuristics—I guess you'd know it as _Ryan Industries_ now—anyway, it was just a couple of weeks ago that we were there. You might have heard about it." He flicked more ash to the floor, keeping his gaze fixed on Jack again. "Not that we came looking for that sort of thing, but while I was sorting through our souvenirs, I happened to find something very, ah, very interesting...and very pertinent to you, boyo."

This was panic. This was fear. But Jack felt no power to do anything but sit as he was, as though rooted to the spot.

"Who saw it?"

"No one but me, if that puts your mind at ease any." It didn't. "The rest of my men have no interest in secret documents and the like; they were just in it for the ADAM. But me, well... I don't mind a bit of reading, myself."

Jack had thought he knew why Atlas had brought him here, but now he wondered if he hadn't been entirely off the mark. No, he didn't just wonder it—he was certain of it.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to hear me out when I speak to you, boyo. I want you to understand where I'm coming from, if only a little. But most importantly of all..." His voice lowered again. "I want you to know that while I may not believe in your father, not anymore, I do believe in _you._ I believe that you can be far more than what your father made you to be; I believe that you have the power to become Rapture's salvation."

The words echoed in Jack's mind, shook him to his very core. He might not have had any way of knowing if they were sincere, but there was an earnestness in Atlas's face and tone that he could not disregard.

"Rapture doesn't need salvation."

"If your father carries on the way he has much longer, it certainly will."

Atlas stubbed his cigarette out, then folded his hands together on the table.

"Listen to me, boyo. If things keep on the way they have, sooner or later there'll be a war coming. The people of this city aren't of a mind to have their suffering ignored. Now, I've been doing what I can to ease their pain, to let them know that there _is_ somebody who cares, somebody who _does_ hear their voice, but if nothing changes, before long they'll be crying for blood...and I won't have the power to stop them. Hell, when that time comes, I may not _want_ to stop them."

_War._ Jack felt no greater confusion than he did at the idea of war coming to Rapture. The city had been built to escape such a thing, he remembered, but could it survive one that sparked from within its walls?

The thought made him feel ill.

"If that time comes, what will you do then? Will you keep on doing whatever your father wills of you, consequences be damned, or will you take action to save this city—to save us all?"

His head swam.

"I don't—"

Atlas held up a hand to cut him off, and Jack complied. "I don't need your answer now, Jack. I didn't come here expecting to change your mind right away. I only wanted to let you know where things stand."

Jack didn't know what to make of that. He didn't know what to make of any of this.

"And, besides that, I wanted you to know that, should you have need of it, you'll most certainly have a friend in me—a friend who believes you can be a man worthy of your own lot in life, beyond whatever mold Ryan intended for you."

A friend. The idea had always been something of a foreign curiosity in Jack's mind, given how much he had always needed to distance himself from others, how little room he was given to compromise his cover for the sake of close relations. Even the people who knew what he really was, Ryan and the scientists—they were no friends to him. But now there was Atlas, a man who not only knew what he was but claimed to believe he could be more than that, who didn't seem willing to use that fact against him...

"How can I trust you?" Jack said quietly, unable to keep a quake from his voice.

"You can trust me because I went to you before anyone else, after finding out what I did." That alone was somewhat convincing, but— "If you don't believe me there, then there's the fact that I've been more honest with you tonight than perhaps your father ever was."

Jack's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that there are things you may not yet know about yourself, Jack—things in those documents that your father would have every reason to keep from you."

He could feel his heart squeeze again. What sort of things could he possibly be talking about?

"Like what?"

Atlas shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't share the details with you, boyo, not tonight. Not until I can trust that you're willing to commit to yourself and not your father—that you're willing to commit to Rapture's future instead of Ryan's tyranny."

Jack was still seated, but he felt like he was reeling. He didn't know what to do. He knew, rationally at least, that there was no concrete proof that Atlas hadn't been bluffing this entire time...but at the same time, how could he be sure that he wasn't telling the truth? His father was a man of many secrets, and Jack had always known this; how could he know how many of those secrets pertained to himself? How could he know Atlas truly didn't have them in his possession?

"I..." He swallowed heavily, and he finally released his grip on the table with trembling hands. "I'll have to think about it."

Atlas nodded. "Of course. Like I said, I didn't come expecting an answer tonight... But there is one thing I do want to give you, to show you that I mean to keep my word."

He reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a beaten leather case—not particularly large, but not small enough that Jack wasn't left wondering how he had managed to keep it in his pockets this whole time—and slid it across the table. Jack took it with some trepidation, and at an encouraging nod from Atlas, carefully tugged down the zipper keeping it shut to peer inside. A soft red glow emanated from within.

"ADAM?"

"It's a plasmid, rather," said Atlas with a slight, almost playful smirk. "You said you weren't an Incinerate man, didn't you? Maybe Electro Bolt will be more your size."

Jack's eyes widened at the sight of it. His father's words echoed in his mind: he had no need to splice himself into something other than what he was already born to be...

But Atlas had already told him he could be more than that. Somebody _believed_ he could be more than that, and that carried more weight than anything else Jack had heard in his entire life.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it, boyo. Just be sure to give this all some consideration, would you kindly?"


	9. Argument

**JUNE 3, 1959 ****— 12:06 PM**

Lately it often seemed as though Andrew Ryan never left his office in Central Control. As for Ryan himself, he often felt as though he never had the time or opportunity to be anywhere else.

There was always, always, always something new for him to see to, some new threat to bring under control, some new concern for him to address. Rapture had never been stronger, he was certain of this, but at times it seemed as though it had never been more restless. Its _people_ had never been more restless, and someone, some_thing_ was making them that way. What exactly that could have been, he didn't yet know, but come hell or high water, he was going to get to the bottom of it—and eradicate it.

His city had never been more restless, and his ideals had never been put to the test this severely. But he had survived for this long, come to this great height, won this much in his life thus far by holding fast to his principles without any room for doubt, and there was no question in his mind that those principles would continue to serve him well. He would make it through this. _His city_ would make it through this, no matter how far the parasites spread their poison, no matter how deeply they entrenched their claws into the great pillar of his success.

The Great Chain would prevail above all else. From this belief, nothing could sway him.

But there were always those who gave it the old college try.

Sullivan and one of his officers sat before him in his office, caps removed and expressions grave.

"Nothing?"

"No, sir," Sullivan said with a shake of his head. "Sinclair told us he had his security sweep every floor of the Sinclair Deluxe. Our men are searching the rest of the Drop as we speak, but so far I haven't heard them turn up with any stolen goods."

Ryan drummed his fingers against the desk as he considered this new information. Augustus Sinclair was a man he had trusted in past business dealings, but he always seemed to have his own agenda or two; Ryan wondered if his word could be trusted now. But to have his men storm the Deluxe and perform their own search wouldn't do only to betray whatever trust remained between them, no—it would betray the trust between him and his city, and the ideals upon which it was founded. No, he had little choice but to take the man at his word.

It burned him to do so. But some sacrifices had to be made for the sake of Rapture's sanctity.

"But, uh... He did have something else to tell us, sir. Don't know yet if it's directly tied to the robberies, but we're looking into it."

"Just tell me, Sullivan."

Sullivan and the other officer exchanged an uneasy glance before he spoke again.

"Well, he's got sources in the Drop, you know, keepin' his ear to the ground and all that... And what these sources are telling him is that there's been someone coming into the slums every few days, giving out food and clothes and such to the people there."

Ryan frowned. He'd heard of this in weeks previous, reports of charity in Lamb's old territory. He hadn't thought much more of it than the random acts of someone who thought doing her bidding would somehow preserve her memory. "And?"

"And they also tell him that the people down there got a name for this guy: Atlas."

_Atlas._ Ryan had little doubt that the name was an alias and nothing more, but what a peculiarly presumptuous alias it was for a man to choose.

"So we have one of the men involved in these thefts, surely. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor... How childish."

He sighed. Ryan was certain of the connection, but Sullivan and his man seemed less sure.

"Is there anything else?"

The two men exchanged another uneasy look. Then Sullivan nodded to the other. "Show him, Patrick."

The officer reached into his coat to pull out a slip of paper—a pamphlet, from the look of the block print on its front—and slid it across the desk. Ryan gave the man a hard look before he took the paper and began to read:

_WHO IS ATLAS?  
__SOMEONE WHO CARES—  
__SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOUR STRUGGLE—  
__SOMEONE WHO HEARS YOUR VOICE!_

_THE TIME OF RAPTURE__'S TYRANNY IS COMING TO A CLOSE—  
__WILL YOU STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS AS A WORKING MAN?_

Ryan felt a sharp twist in his gut, a reaction that provoked nothing but cold, quiet anger.

"They're all over the Drop," said Sullivan. "Sinclair said he even found some himself in the Deluxe lobby, last he was there. When I asked some of the boys at the station, they said they're turning up in Apollo Square too."

Ryan folded his hands together and slowly brought them to rest at his chin.

"Find whatever press is printing this tripe and put a stop to it," Ryan said softly, ice in his tone. "Then find this _Atlas_ character himself, and put a stop to him as well. I will not have him threaten my city any more than this."

"Understood, sir."

Still, they looked uneasy. Ryan gave the both of them a long stare.

"There's something else, isn't there?"

Neither of them seemed to want to answer. Sullivan was the first to work up his nerve.

"It's just that, well... There's an awful lot of splicers holing up at the old Fontaine's Home in Hestia Chambers, even though we had the place condemned months ago. It looks like there might be something going on in there—I don't know, something big."

Ryan frowned again, his brow knitting. "And is there a reason you're telling me this instead of investigating it as you should?"

There was a heavy pause.

Patrick cleared his throat, then spoke in hesitant words: "I was there, keeping an eye on the place, and some guy—no uniform, no weapons, no nothing, just looked like any other slummy type around the Square—anyway, I watched him go up to these splicers, kept saying he needed to see somebody in there, and next thing I know, one of those spliced-up freaks just laughs and..._whoosh._" He gestured with his hands in mimicry of a burst of flame. "Just like that. Whatever they've got in there, they don't want anybody getting to it."

Ryan could feel something fuming inside him. "You men have a duty to uphold as protectors of this fair city...and you mean to tell me you're going to let a few splicers stand in the way of that?"

"Sir," cut in Sullivan, "with all due respect, it's more than just a few that's down there. And..." He sighed heavily. "After what happened with Fontaine... We lost a lot of good men that day, Mr. Ryan. We can't afford to have those kinds of casualties again."

The flames at the back of Ryan's mind only grew hotter. _Fontaine_—even now, even in his death, the man was causing him no end of troubles.

At that moment, without any announcement or warning, the door to his office hissed and slid open. Ryan looked up to see his son in the doorway.

"Ah..." A look of surprise came over Jack's face when he noticed Sullivan and the other officer. "I'm not interrupting something important, am I?"

Ryan sighed deeply. His secretary was still missing, it seemed.

"No," he said curtly, then turned to the others. "You have your assignments. Get to them."

"Yes, sir."

They both got to their feet, Sullivan taking the lead, and nodded to Jack as they passed him on their way out. Jack watched after them for a long moment before he took one of their seats in front of his father's desk.

"What were they doing here?"

Ryan found himself sighing again. His anger, powerful as it was, was starting to become wearying. "They've been investigating the recent _thefts_ from our properties."

Jack shifted in his seat, his brow furrowed as he spoke. "What did they find?"

"Nothing of worth."

"I see."

Jack said it with a frown, his eyes lowering to the desk. His brow furrowed again, and Ryan realized his line of sight crossed the pamphlet still on his desk. He covered it with his hand and crumpled it before Jack could have the chance to question it.

"What was that?"

But his effort was for naught.

"Something that's been turning up in the slums." Jack didn't need to know the details. "Propaganda. Nothing more."

If the expression on his face was any indication, Jack wasn't assuaged.

"What kind of propaganda?"

Ryan gave him a wary look. He supposed he couldn't begrudge the boy for being curious, but there was some question in his mind as to where he thought he was going with this.

"The kind that's meant to empower the parasite," Ryan said carefully, while opening a drawer in his desk and dropping the crumpled leaflet inside. "Something meant to paint me as some kind of _tyrant_ rather than the man responsible for their salvation."

Jack shifted again. He seemed hesitant, though for what reason Ryan couldn't quite yet fathom.

"Are you sure _salvation_ is the right word for it?"

Ryan only felt wearier and wearier. Perhaps he was expecting too much of the boy to fully understand, but he could accept nothing less.

"This city is the salvation of mankind, Jack—of the best and brightest this world has to offer, safe from the grasp of those who would seek to undermine their worth. You know that." He realized he'd started tapping his fingers against the desk again, and quietly laid his hand flat. "I am well aware of its _godly_ connotations, yes, but what other word would I have cause to use?"

Jack looked down, pointing his gaze somewhere below the desk. "Well... It just seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who don't exactly see this place as any kind of salvation."

There it was.

Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Every man and woman in this city came here by their own choice. If the burden of that choice has become too great for them to bear, that is no responsibility of mine; it is for them to bear alone."

Usually that would have been enough to quell any doubts on Jack's part. But it seemed he would not be so easily mollified today.

"People came here because they thought it would be some great opportunity for them, didn't they? Better than whatever they could find on the surface." Jack's tone began as tentative, but strengthened as he spoke. "But that couldn't be true for everyone, could it? Somebody always has to be at the bottom for others to be at the top."

It had been quite some time since Jack had attempted to argue his philosophies in such a manner. Ryan had almost thought he'd grown out of it.

"Those at the _bottom_ of your metaphorical scale are never deprived of the opportunity to lift themselves up." He spoke with firmness, intending to leave no room for Jack to object. "Those at the _top_ are there by virtue of their merit and hard work. Nobody handed them success out of the kindness of their hearts; their achievements are not undeserved."

He hadn't intended to leave any room, but Jack found it anyway. "What about everyone else, then? You can't really say that the people in Pauper's Drop deserve to be left to starve, can you?"

_Pauper__'s Drop_—he was certainly hearing a lot about the place as of late. Ryan felt he was gaining a clearer picture of what Jack was truly driving at.

"What do you know about that place, Jack?"

Jack bristled. "I've seen it," he said quietly. "I saw that there wasn't a single dry surface down there. I saw people lying dead in the streets."

Ryan's fingers were tapping again. He didn't know what he was going to do with this child.

"You have no business being in such a place, _sin moj_."

"I wanted to be there," he countered, suddenly leaning forward. "I wanted to see it with my own eyes, and—and now that I have... I want to do something to help."

Ryan could feel his fury bubbling up all over again. This was unacceptable.

"And in doing so you would seek to undermine all I have worked for—not only that, but you would seek to undermine all that Rapture stands for. Is that really what you want, Jack?"

"No, but—" His fortitude wavered, but only for a moment. "It wouldn't _undermine_ anything to keep people from starving in the gutter when there's no good reason they should have to live like that."

"You're right," said Ryan, his voice quiet but not soft. "There is no reason why they should _have_ to live like that. But they do because it is their own will that traps them there. No one, not a single soul on this earth, is ever entitled to prosperity."

"But you're the only one who's bringing _prosperity_ into this." In contrast to his father, Jack's voice was now raised. "I'm not talking about prosperity, goddamnit, I'm only talking about a basic standard of living!"

"And who will be the one to set this standard?" Ryan met his son's words tone for tone, decibel for decibel, but he would not allow himself to be so physically moved. "Who will be the one to keep them to it, hm? Will it be you? Will you be the one handing them money out of your own pocket? Will you give them your food, your home, the clothes off your back? What will you do when you've been reduced to nothing and yet they keep asking for more, more, _more?_"

"Stop it, stop_—_"

Jack got up from his seat with a clatter, paced to the other side of the room with his head in his hands. Ryan watched him without a word, without moving from his seat. His tendency towards such exaggeratedly physical expression—something he had seemed to grow out of, but evidently still manifested under duress—was perhaps a result of his genetically-engineered predispositions. No matter what it was, Ryan considered it little more than a weakness.

Once he had collected himself, he looked at Ryan with a wavering glare.

"You had me created to serve Rapture, didn't you? To carry on your legacy? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do what I think is best to protect it?"

Ryan turned to better face him, but did not stand. Other situations might have called for him to stand at eye level with his son, to better assert his authority over him; in this situation, that could easily be achieved by remaining calm.

"Whether you actually fulfill the purpose for which you were created remains to be seen." He was calm, but he didn't let that stop his fury from shining through. "If this course of action is what you truly think is best, then that day may never come to pass."

Jack only continued to glare at him. It seemed he didn't have a retort prepared.

This time Ryan stood, keeping a steady hand on his desk, to ensure that Jack would not try to ignore him or look away.

"Remember this, _sin moj._ All that you have now was given to you by me, and it was only by my mercy that I gave it to you—by my mercy, and my expectation that you would grow to earn it in due time. Do you understand?"

Again, Jack didn't respond, though again his stance seemed to falter.

"You have yet to show me that you've earned it, Jack. I will not be kept waiting much longer."

All he did was clench his hands into white-knuckled fists.

"Do you understand, _sin moj?_ Answer me."

"Yes, _batya._"


	10. Aid

**JUNE 3, 1959 ****— 7:57 PM**

"_You have no business being in such a place."_

His father hadn't directly commanded him not to return to Pauper's Drop. Nevertheless, a sick feeling curled low in Jack's gut at the very thought of it.

In all likelihood, the thought wasn't even one Jack might have entertained under his own cognizance. But his father had always had quite the way of inspiring Jack to do just the opposite of what he ordered him to do, even if Jack never could muster the will or nerve to go through with it in the end.

"_You have yet to show me you've earned it, Jack."_

He would never come to earn his father's respect if he remained in this sort of state, would he? Unwilling to obey his father's command, yet unable to defy it.

The cloud of indecision that had cast itself over his thoughts seemed impossible to shake as the tram car clattered its way down the cobbled streets of Olympus Heights, down from the station to the Athena suites he called home. Streetlights between the lanes flickered to life as the lamps overhead began to dim, heralding the evening's approach. Shafts of soft blue light continued to stream in through the great glass panes on all sides, as though the rest of the city and all its shining towers took no notice of the hours that passed. The night was calm, though Jack was not.

It was getting to the point where he wasn't sure if he could remember what it was like to be calm, to have little care for whatever troubles or worries came his way. He wondered if he had ever truly known what that was like. But even if he hadn't, he still found himself missing the illusion of it.

The car slowly lumbered to a stop once it reached the Bistro Square; Jack would have to transfer before he was home free. He disembarked with the rest of the passengers, none of whom paid him even the slightest amount of attention. For once, he was grateful for it.

Among them was a woman whose clothes were more tattered, more faded than the rest. A dark shawl attempted and failed to hide the bulbous growths on her face and the jagged downward twist of her mouth. She hurried away from the crowd, shivering and drawing her arms about herself as if fighting off some imagined cold, and headed in the direction of the bulkhead to Apollo Square.

_Apollo Square._ A memory came to him them, something Atlas had told him before they had parted the other night: that he could always be found in the Square, whenever Jack was ready to make his decision.

As he stared down the path to the bulkhead, echoes of his father's words still ringing in his head, he felt ready. He felt readier for this, more determined for this than perhaps he had ever been in his life.

But first he needed to prepare himself, and for that, he would need to return home. He let his gaze linger upon the path, upon the spliced woman's retreating back, but soon enough he caught the tram that would take him there.

* * *

When Jack entered Apollo Square later that evening, it was in the same get-up he'd worn to disguise himself at the Atlantic Express depot—shabby coat, dull cap, carefully-wound scarf and all—though his pockets this time were considerably weightier. Part of that weight came from the pistol at his side, which he wasn't certain he could capably use but felt necessary all the same. He hadn't yet taken the plasmid Atlas had given him; his indecision still kept him wary of its effects. The pistol would have to serve as his self-defense instead.

He almost hadn't taken it, of course, being dubious of his father's warnings of the place. How dangerous could any part of Rapture be, after all? But once he made his way through the bulkhead and up the sloping streets to the Square itself—similar to those of Olympus Heights save the cracked cobblestones and rusted, disused tram rails—he saw that, for once, he had been right to heed him.

A stench like nothing else he had ever encountered, not even in the Drop, assailed his senses as soon as he stepped through the arched walkway and into the Square proper. Wooden scaffolding sat in the center of the space and towered high above him, adorned with swaying nooses hanging from its highest beams. Painted signs accompanied each one:

_SMUGGLER!  
__TRAITOR!  
__PARASITE!_

Jack felt a sick pang in his gut as he wondered if they had ever been put to use. He didn't want to think about it.

He pulled the scarf up past his mouth and nose in an attempt to block out the smell, to breathe in the scent of smoke and steel instead. For the most part, it worked, at least enough for him to press on. But before he could do that, he needed to know which way to go.

A huddled figure sat slumped against the base of the scaffold. Jack's first thought was another dead body, just as he'd seen in the Drop, but when he came closer, he realized it was the same woman he had seen earlier in the Bistro Square.

He knelt down close to her. "Excuse me..."

She snapped her head up to look at him, her ADAM-twisted features sharp and glaring. "What?"

Jack very nearly flinched at the woman's sudden severity. But he had to press on.

"I need to find the man who calls himself Atlas."

She huffed out a laugh. "Don't we all, kid."

"Do you know where he is?"

She gave him a sidelong look, as though attempting to see through his disguise. Jack used all his strength to keep his resolve from visibly wavering.

"Try the deep end of Hestia. If you can get that far, that is."

The ominousness of her words didn't fully register in Jack's mind. He was filtering through memories instead, flicking images of the maps he had been made to memorize behind his mind's eye until he found one that showed him how he could get to Hestia from this point.

"Thank you," he said with a short nod as he stood. The woman said nothing in reply.

He walked quickly down the path to where Hestia awaited him. The brightly-lit sign for a Rapture Metro station shone in the distance, and further down from it was another sign that had rusted and faded in its long months without maintenance, but its bold lettering was still legible: _Fontaine__'s Home for the Poor._ Crude barricades had been erected between its entrance and the Metro station, allowing only the narrowest path of entry. The shadows of indistinct shapes could be seen moving about behind them, briefly dashed by bright blue crackles of electricity, while their laughing voices carried in eerie echoes down the entire length of the glass-paned path.

Were Jack a man of lesser nerve, the sight of the barricades alone would be enough to turn him back. But he was determined not to leave this place until he had accomplished what he came here for.

He approached with caution, never once taking his hand off the pistol in his pocket.

"_Hold it right there!"_

He stopped, less out of fear and more out of keenness to avoid a fight. Two men came climbing over the barricade, limbs sprawling in a way that barely looked human. One wore a mask while the other's face was bandaged, but neither were sufficient to hide the telltale growths on their limbs and necks. There was no question that this place was guarded by splicers.

But Jack had come this far. He wasn't about to let that sway him from this spot.

"I'm here to see Atlas," he called to them both, willing strength in his tone.

"Atlas?" The masked splicer cocked his head. "Ain't no Atlas here."

"I think you're mistaken, chap," said the bandaged splicer with an accusatory point; in his hands were a pair of heavy fish hooks which Jack hadn't noticed in the dark, but now were clear as day. "Best turn yourself around before something _unfortunate_ happens to ye."

Jack bristled. The threat did less to intimidate him and more to make him even more determined.

"I know he's here," he snapped at them. "He wanted me to come see him. Just let me through."

"Or what?" said the first splicer, suddenly advancing on him. He was just close enough for Jack to see the blue plasmid glow in his eyes through the holes of his mask. "You got something to make it worth our while?"

"I might," Jack said firmly, not backing down. He'd made sure of that.

"Wait a minute." The splicer stopped, but leaned closer to Jack as though peering at him. "You look familiar—fuck, you're Ryan's kid, aintcha?"

At that alone and nothing else, Jack felt his first pang of fear.

"You are!" The splicer barked out a laugh and, much to Jack's disturbed surprise, licked his chops. "Wonder what the hell your kind's doing lookin' for Atlas, huh?"

The other splicer was laughing too, and as he began to advance on Jack as well, tongues of flame jetted out from his fingertips and curled up the curved, wickedly sharp lengths of his fish hooks. "I'm wonderin' how much his old man would pay up to get him back."

It took no time at all for that pang of fear to ring fully into panic. Jack took a quick step back, hand tightening on the grip of his pistol—

"What the bloody hell is going on out here?"

After the split second it took him to recognize the voice, Jack felt his panic replaced by an immediate and immense wave of relief. Atlas emerged from the barricade and muscled his way between them.

"Just doing what you told us, boss."

"He's an intruder!"

"This man is _not_ an intruder," Atlas said to them both, shouting without raising his voice, and put a firm hand on Jack's shoulder. "And you're not to hurt him or stand in his way any longer, you got that?"

One of the splicers swore, while the other mumbled half-intelligible apologies. But both retreated without a single backwards glance to spare.

Atlas muttered curses under his breath before he turned to Jack. "Sorry about that, boyo. Damn them, bloody splicers... I damn well told them to be expectin' you."

"It's all right," Jack said quietly, willing himself to release the grip of the pistol in his pocket. He was reluctant to admit it or let it show, but he couldn't help but still be shaken by the encounter. He wondered what would ever possess a man like Atlas to use unstable splicers as hired muscle.

"Come on. We'd best speak inside."

Atlas led Jack through the barricade and into the building beyond: Fontaine's Home, a claustrophobically-crowded tenement that towered to a dizzying height when Jack dared to look upwards. Jack had heard that this place, like most of Fontaine's other ventures, had been condemned some time after the man's death, but he wouldn't have guessed it by looking. People huddled together on the ground floor, some lying on ratty sofas and haphazardly-arranged cots, others going busily to and fro on the stairs and floors above them. It was up the stairs that Atlas led Jack further, winding around the entire width of the tenement's atrium.

The people on the stairs stood aside for them, giving nods and short words of greeting to Atlas as they passed by. Jack tugged his scarf up again, far from keen to be recognized again.

As they exited the stairs onto one of the higher floors, Jack caught a glimpse through an open door of a room packed with printing presses, littered with stacks of papers all bearing the same three words: _WHO IS ATLAS?_ But Atlas continued to lead him on.

Finally they reached a room which Jack assumed to be Atlas's office: cramped and dimly-lit, with only one door and barely enough room for a desk and some chairs. Atlas closed the door behind him as Jack took a seat, then removed his flat cap with a sigh.

"I'm sure you're used to finer accommodations than this," said Atlas as he sat behind the desk, setting down his cap and running a hand through his thick, fair hair. "But it's the best I can manage in terms of privacy."

"It's fine," Jack said just as quietly as before. Part of him was still feeling shaken from earlier, but another part of him wondered if he wasn't feeling shaken by the gravity of what he was about to do.

"So..." Atlas leaned back, giving Jack an appraising look. "Since you came here after all, can I take that to mean you've made your decision?"

"I..." Jack swallowed. His heart hammered in his chest, and his tongue suddenly felt too thick to form words. But he could hardly back down now, could he?

Perhaps he would do better to let his actions speak instead.

He reached into the deep pockets of his coat, first to retrieve his pistol and carefully deposit it on the desk, then to retrieve the rest of it: rolls upon rolls of carefully-wrapped bills, hundreds' worth of Rapture dollars in total. He dumped the cash onto the desk and pushed the whole pile of it towards Atlas.

"Here," he said curtly. "I don't know if this will help, but—I want it to help. Whatever you need with it, I don't care. It would probably do a lot more good for you than it ever has for me."

Atlas's eyes were wide, brows raised, as he looked over the stack of cash. He reached for the roll nearest him to take a closer look, and let out a long whistle as he flipped through the bills.

"I'll say, boyo... We've greater need of food and supplies at the mo', but a few hundred Rapture dollars certainly never hurt."

"If that's what you need, I can get that for you too." Jack's hands were in fists at his knees as he strove to keep his tone level. The thought of his father finding out about any of this was nearly too much for him to bear in that moment. "Food and anything else, I don't care, I can—"

"Settle down, lad." Atlas's voice wasn't just calm, it was calming. Somewhat. "This will do just fine. It's a hell of a lot trickier for your type to smuggle in food and the like. There's no need for you to go riskin' your neck on our account."

The bite of his nails digging into his palms was enough to bring Jack down—somewhat. "I don't care about the risk, if it means that something might actually change for the _better_ down here—if it means that I could actually _affect_ something down here, goddamnit—"

"Settle down." His voice was firmer this time, but still calm. Atlas pushed the pile of cash aside so that it wasn't directly between the two of them, and then he pulled his chair up to lean in closer to Jack. "What's got you riled up like this?"

Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to Jack that his earlier disagreement with his father had put him so deeply out of sorts. He'd thought it was just the quality of living in this place, or the duress those splicers had put him under, but now he realized that the sensation of adrenaline pumping through his veins, the tightening of his chest and the thudding in his ears, was just the same as when he'd fought with him earlier that day. It was the same as when he'd fought with him just a few days ago, and—why, it was just the same as when he'd ever fought with him, wasn't it?

He wondered if this was what it truly felt like to defy his father's will. For all that he wanted to be his own man, this was nearly too much to take.

"Jack."

He startled back to alertness, remembering that Atlas had asked him a question.

"Sorry—" He quickly shook his head, trying to shake off his unease. "Sorry..." It didn't work. "Sorry, I just—there's a lot on my mind."

"You don't have to apologize, boyo." Atlas's tone was soft, and in his eyes was a look of concern.

It was a look Jack had only rarely received in his short life thus far, but he knew it when he saw it regardless. It was rare enough that any instance of it, even this one now, was enough to touch something deep inside him, something that always, always yearned for solace.

"But would you kindly tell me what's eatin' you?"

Atlas was a friend. He had said it himself, and Jack now believed it. He was the only man in this whole damn city who knew what he was, who could possibly have any understanding of what he was going through, whom he could also consider a _friend_. He was someone Jack could confide in; he was someone Jack could trust.

"It's my father," he said quietly, tentatively. "It's always been... For as long as I can remember, it's always been him."

Still, he could say no more than that. It felt as though something was binding him from speaking any further, from speaking any ill of the man who had brought him into being. It frustrated him; it frightened him.

"It's all right, Jack. You can tell me whatever you need."

And just like that, it felt as though his binds were lifted.

"I can't understand what he wants from me," he stammered out, still tentative, but now that the words were coming out there was no stopping them. "I can't understand why he would have me—why he would have me _built_ and just... It's like nothing I do matters. It's like nothing I _can_ do matters, goddamnit. He wants me to be a man and follow in his footsteps, but the second I dare to even _think_ about even doing anything of my own, he suddenly decides I'm not good enough."

Atlas listened with a frown. "Sounds like you're learning what we've known all along," he said softly. "Andrew Ryan is a bloody hypocrite."

"He is." A jolt of adrenaline thrilled throughout Jack's body at the admission, but it only served to turn his stomach. "He is, damn it all—he talks all the time about how this place is the last bastion of free will, about the importance of _choice_ and all that bullshit, but I can't even make my own choices unless it's what _he_ wants. If I don't do _exactly_ what he wants, then I... He says he'll have me..."

The thought made him dizzy. He quickly shook his head in an attempt to gather himself.

"He won't even let me see my mother, you know?" Jack stared down to see that his knuckles were white. "It doesn't even matter that I already know who she is, it doesn't matter that I don't want her to know who I am—what woman would want want to know her only child ended up like _this_, you know—no, it doesn't matter at all, because it's too much of a risk to _him_—"

"Hold on, lad." Atlas's brow was knit; he looked confused. "Your mother?"

Jack supposed there hadn't been any information on her in the documents Atlas had found. He supposed that this revelation wasn't one Atlas necessarily needed to know. But although he also supposed he should find this at least somewhat concerning, he found that he really, truly didn't care at all.

"My mother," he repeated. Those two words alone burned in his mind, leaving a deep, lingering ache. "My genetic... The woman they took me from, before I was born. I can't even see her." His voice shook. "I'm not even supposed to know who she is, as if—as if my father doesn't want me knowing I was born from the womb of a _whore_—"

"Easy, lad." Atlas cut in gently, holding up a hand to stop him from speaking any further. "You don't have to tell me that if it's too difficult for you. Besides, knowing what I already do, it might be safer for me if I don't learn much more."

Jack hadn't considered that. He nodded silently, humbled by Atlas's logic.

Atlas said nothing for some time after that, only look carefully at Jack in quiet contemplation. Then he made a soft, thoughtful noise and opened one of the drawers of his desk to reach inside.

"Here. I suppose after all that, you're more than deserving of this."

Jack's eyes widened as Atlas slid a thick, black-labeled folder across the desk to him. In all his turmoil, he had completely forgotten about the details that Atlas had promised him.

"Thank you..." He took it with a lightly trembling hand. "Thank you, Atlas."

"Don't mention it," said Atlas with a nod. "Just be sure to keep giving us what aid you can manage, would you kindly?"

"Of course." There was no question of it in Jack's mind.


	11. Redactions

**JUNE 4, 1959 ****— 12:32 AM**

As soon as Jack returned home with his precious cargo, more precious to him than anything else in the world entire, he locked himself inside. He would not leave again, he decided, until he had learned every secret of himself these documents had to offer. To this end, he was more determined than anything else.

He didn't know what he would find, but whatever it would end up being, he knew with certainty that he needed to find it.

Of all the things he suspected he _might_ find, however, none included the possibility of what he _did_ find: lines upon lines, rows upon rows of heavy, impenetrably black strikes.

The file contained a great many pages, but as Jack sifted through each of them, it seemed increasingly as though not a single one had any new knowledge to offer him. His eyes skimmed over each page for breaks in the black, fitting together fragments of sentences with fragments of words, joining them to make any significant meaning in his mind, but his efforts were for naught.

Towards the back of the file, amid the sea of black ink, he found a series of pages that charted his growth—from an embryo to something like an infant, to something like an adolescent, all within the span of 1956 to 1958. There were asterisks and checks, footnotes and milestones, rows of notes recorded beneath the carefully-lined charts and graphs, but nearly all of them were obscured. These pages told him nothing he didn't already know.

Was this what he had betrayed his father for? His stomach turned at the thought.

He didn't regret giving his trust to Atlas, nor did he regret giving him his aid. He didn't regret his want to do something better for the people of Rapture. But it wasn't precisely regret that stung him now, that twisted his innards and left a dull ache in his heart and his mind. It was something more like disappointment—a futile disappointment, the resentment of a child against the things he cannot change, the impotent frustrations of a man who might as well be a speck of dust against the swirling cosmos, struggling but unable to fight the forces that shape his world.

His efforts had been useless thus far, utterly for naught, even in terms of his own self, and he knew they would only continue to be this way unless he changed—unless _something_ changed. But what change could he hope to bring about in the world around him if he could not change himself?

What change could he hope to bring to Rapture if he could not bring himself to act in his own interest—purely his own, and nobody else's? How could he manage the will to act in his own interest with the knowledge that he could accomplish nothing of worth?

He stared at the fan of papers he had laid out on his bedroom floor, at the rows of black that stared back at him. His mind felt numb. Every part of him felt numb.

He had to turn his thoughts to another angle if he wanted to salvage anything from this—if he wanted to salvage any part of himself.

What had Atlas said to him?

_I mean that there are things you may not yet know about yourself, Jack—things in those documents that your father would have every reason to keep from you._

Jack had found nothing new in these documents, nothing that his father or the scientists had not already told him. But much more than that was hidden, so much that Jack couldn't possibly know whether or not Atlas had been right...but then again, how could he know? What had Atlas seen in this file that would give him reason to suspect some greater conspiracy than the one Jack already knew?

There was the possibility, he supposed, that Atlas hadn't counted on Jack knowing anything at all about his origins, what with how practiced he had made his cover story. But he hadn't seemed surprised enough for that when Jack proved to the contrary.

There had to be something he was missing.

He looked through each one of the papers before him, as though the rows of black would break upon themselves and rearrange into some pattern of meaning before his eyes. He turned over each and every one, scanning for some hand-penned or lightly-inked line, or some other scrap of information tucked away in a margin or on the back of a page, before he finally discovered something of note: a page towards the very back that, once he plucked at it with his finger, split itself in twain.

The two pages must have gotten stuck together by chance, though he wasn't sure how. He didn't particularly care to figure that out at the moment, because the page that now revealed itself had not been redacted in any part.

_CONTRACT OF SALE  
__This contract is made on March 30, 1956 for the sale of one (1) human embryo between Mary-Catherine Jolene and Fontaine Futuristics._

A pang of confusion shook throughout his entire being and settled low in his gut, turning his stomach with dread.

He read on to the back of the page, to the list of the undersigned:

_Mary-Catherine Jolene  
__Brigid Tenenbaum  
__Frank Fontaine_

Frank Fontaine.

All Jack knew of the man himself were the words of hatred his father espoused, the only words Andrew Ryan ever had to spare for his memory. He was a crook of the highest degree who flouted Rapture's few laws for his own gain, whether it was in risking the city's safety from the surface world to smuggle in illegal goods, or providing for the so-called _needy_ and taking advantage of their trust. To make things worse, he was also an exceptionally shrewd businessman, gaining footholds in every market and building up an entrepreneurial empire to rival Ryan's own.

He had also pioneered the plasmid industry, Jack remembered. Tenenbaum and Suchong had worked under him long before they had ever worked under Ryan. It was his funding of their research that made plasmids possible. Ryan Industries now owned the ADAM market, but Fontaine had been the first one responsible for it.

When he first came to learn of it, Jack had thought it odd that his father had chosen to nationalize Fontaine's assets rather than giving them to the people, in accordance with the man's will—sensible, but odd. It made sense to him that Ryan would be loathe to do anything in accordance with Fontaine's wishes, and it made sense to him that Fontaine Futuristics and its dominance over the plasmid market seemed a mighty prize in the aftermath of Fontaine's death. But to take the man's business by force, even after he was dead in the ground, hardly aligned with what Jack knew of his father's philosophy, and the thought that he would betray that philosophy at any cost, no matter what the prize may have been, seemed odder to him than anything else.

It was in the midst of this arrangement of facts and the links he forged between them that an answer occurred in Jack's mind, appearing to him as a bright light piercing through a cloudy haze.

Fontaine Futuristics controlled the development of plasmids, and had the most skilled scientists of all Rapture under their employ. Ryan needed an heir of his own flesh and blood, one he could be sure would survive Rapture's inevitable turmoil and enact his will without question, and he needed one as quickly as possible.

_No one else must know what you really are, Jack._

No one—and that included most of all Ryan's greatest nemesis, even if that man had played a significant part in his creation.

Frank Fontaine had been killed in the earlier months of 1958, not long before the beginnings of Jack's conscious memory—not long at all before his debut to the public of Rapture, before his official crowning as Andrew Ryan's son and heir.

What he had learned of Fontaine's death was that it had resulted from a shootout between his men and Rapture security, during a raid which was meant only to result in his arrest. But Jack was no longer certain that his death wasn't the primary objective of that night.

Jack was no longer certain his father had no other reason to want Frank Fontaine dead, nor any other reason to seize Fontaine Futuristics.

His stomach turned again. His heart hammered in his chest. He stumbled back to his bed, trying desperately to process what this could possibly mean for him.

Why would his father keep Fontaine's involvement a secret from him? What would he stand to gain from it? Why would he keep that knowledge from him and nothing else?

That thought spurred another, which sent sparks of panic dancing down his spine:

What else could his father be keeping from him?

He had to confront him over it.

No—no, no, no. In the split second after Jack considered the idea, he didn't hesitate to quash it. It wouldn't just be the most foolish decision he could make—it might just be his very last. Ryan had frequently warned him of the consequences of failing to meet his expectations, enough so that Jack didn't have any doubt he meant to follow through on them. Ryan now had the resources to build him entirely at his fingertips, his own and no one else's; Jack could easily be replaced.

His head swam. He tried to think of someone, anyone else he could go to, someone who could help him sort this out...

_Atlas._

But no—that wouldn't do either, would it? Atlas had his own business to see to, after all, and besides, he'd said himself that perhaps the less he knew of Jack's history, the better—hadn't he? Even if he had already noticed the Fontaine connection for himself—why, wouldn't that just mark him even higher on the list of Ryan's foes? If Ryan had been so willing to eliminate Fontaine himself, to stamp out every trace of involvement he'd had with Jack's creation, who else would he be willing to eliminate to keep that secret buried? What would stop him from killing another?

He felt lightheaded, sick and lightheaded, perhaps more so than he'd ever felt in his life. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he _should_ do.

But he did know one thing: he couldn't stay where he was, locked in his room, surrounded by the secrets of his life that he had never before dared to consider.

* * *

He hadn't been sure where he was headed after he finally gathered himself well enough to leave his apartment some hours later. But sure enough, before long, he found his feet tracing the route back to Fort Frolic.

The piano in Kyle Fitzpatrick's cramped studio affair remained untouched for the evening. Fitzpatrick himself played a concerto upon Jack's torso instead, letting his long fingers run and splay over the hard lines of Jack's muscled chest.

"Mm." Fitzpatrick purred the soft noise into Jack's neck. "You know," he murmured, lips ghosting over Jack's skin, "Sander's always crooning about your old man... But I guess I beat him to the punch, when it comes to getting a Ryan into my bed."

Jack's stomach turned. His hands tightened on Fitzpatrick's bare hips where they straddled his own.

"Don't talk about my father while I'm here."

"Whatever you say."

Fitzpatrick didn't say anything at all after that, only arched his back and rocked bodily into him as his hands dipped lower, as he attached himself to Jack's throat with teeth and lips and tongue. Jack tipped his head back with a groan and shut his eyes, willing his mind to be stilled at last, willing himself to be lost in it all.

* * *

**JUNE 4, 1959 — 9:22 PM**

Yi Suchong's private quarters were hardly the most luxurious to be found in the high-class Mercury Suites. But it was here that Andrew Ryan found himself, not entirely of his own will, peering through inscrutable scientific notes with a careful, appraising eye.

"Did I not grant you private laboratory space at my facility?"

"Bah." Suchong was still busily at work, not one content to let even a man like Ryan make any interruptions in his routine. "You say private, but hardly any privacy at all. Not enough for this. You want this work to be private, you let Suchong do it his way."

Ryan's lips pressed into a thin frown as he took a closer look through Suchong's scattered documents: further notes of a scientific nature, torn envelopes addressed to and from a _T. Telamon_, pinned bills and receipts marked with red ink. As long as the man got him results, he found little reason to argue with his methods.

"Is it ready?" He had come here under the impression that it was, but the haphazard look of Suchong's workspace seemed to imply otherwise.

"Yes—almost." Suchong finally stopped for a moment to adopt a contemplative look. "Very close now. Phase one of the process is already complete. All plasmids in current circulation now have the modified formula."

"I am aware," Ryan said brusquely. He looked beyond Suchong, to the array of steel drums looking oddly out of place, over-sized in the man's cramped kitchen lab. From them emanated a sickly scent. "And these would be...?"

"The pheromone compounds, of course. The new plasmid formula is such that only heavy, very heavy ADAM users will be affected, but that will be enough. Once these pheromones are dispersed through the air filtration, every splicer in Rapture will be dancing to your tune."

A method of bringing the splicer problem fully, literally under control. When Ryan had first put the task to his scientists, the solution Suchong had returned to him was loathsome. The very thought of stripping away any man or woman's right to self-determination was something that stood at polar odds with all that Ryan stood for—no, with all that _Rapture_ stood for.

But, he soon rationalized, that was the sacrifice he would have to make for the greater good. These splicers had forfeited their right to free will in the same instant they had forfeited the safety of his city and its people.

"What is left to be done?"

"Well." The look on Suchong's face was somewhere between a scowl and a frown. "The method for their control has not been tested. No subjects to test it on—pah! Your man Sinclair needs to send us more warm bodies."

"I'll pass it along," said Ryan in a flat tone. Nothing would come of it. Sinclair had been cagey as of late where the subject of Persephone and its _warm bodies_ were concerned, as most people were when troubling topics came up in Ryan's presence. Whatever the matter was, it wasn't something he needed to concern himself with at present.

"Yes, yes... Anyway. Further testing must be done to ensure the method of control is secure. It is certain to work, of course, but tests are needed to be _extra_ certain."

Extra certain wasn't quite enough in Ryan's mind, not where the future of Rapture was concerned.

"And what is the method of control?"

"Very simple, very, very simple: a trigger phrase. The pheromones disperse, you get on the public address, say three little words—_Rapture is glory_—and poof! Splicers become bonded to the sound of your voice."

The words _trigger phrase_ were enough to make Ryan's mood sour entirely.

"No." His sourness became sternness. "The use of a trigger phrase is impractical and insecure. I won't have it."

"Impractical?" Suchong's tone suggested a laugh behind his words, but it seemed he knew better than that. "The phrase only needs to be spoken once before it takes permanent effect. Much more practical than that wind-up toy you call a—"

He suddenly stopped, realizing nearly too late just how far he had overstepped his bounds. Ryan took a slow, fuming breath through his nostrils, just enough to let Suchong know it hadn't been missed.

"The use of a trigger phrase, as you've described it, is too simple. The risk of someone else taking advantage of it is simply unacceptable."

"What risk?" said Suchong as he folded his arms over his chest. "You and I, we are the only two in all of Rapture who know this phrase. The risk is just the same with that boy of yours, is it not? And yet he lives."

There was no direct insult this time, but Ryan still felt the stirrings of anger upon hearing his son mentioned in such a way.

"There is no one alive in this city apart from you and I and Tenenbaum who knows of the existence of any trigger phrase in that boy." His voice was quiet but colored with fury. "Not once have I used that phrase to control his path; not once have I even considered it. It is through my guidance and his own capability that he will find his way—that alone, and nothing else. Do you understand me?"

Suchong seemed doubtful, but he was willing to relent.

"Tenenbaum would disagree, perhaps. But if you insist."

Ryan felt another stir. Tenenbaum had been cagey as well, though he had never supposed that whatever troubled her had anything to do with Jack. Perhaps he had supposed incorrectly.

"In any case..." That was something to deal with later. "The citizens of Rapture, these _splicers__..._ They are another matter. Regardless, a trigger phrase will not do."

That put Suchong on his guard. "Mr. Ryan, you have to understand, these pheromones are already coded to respond to that trigger phrase."

"My decision is final."

"But to implement a new method of control would mean to start all _over_—"

"I told you once already that my decision is _final_." Ryan didn't raise his voice; he didn't need to. "Do not make me tell you again."

Suchong could only sputter and glare. After a moment of this, however, he finally relented.

"If you _insist_, Mr. Ryan."

* * *

When Ryan left Mercury Suites shortly afterward, stepping into the chilled air of Olympus Heights, he found that his disappointment over Suchong's progress—or rather lack thereof—was only tempered by the question of Tenenbaum's doings.

Her newfound attachment to the Little Sisters was questionable enough that Ryan often wondered what she hoped to gain by continuing to work with them. He had also wondered why exactly his son had needed to see her so pressingly over the past few months, what with his making far more visits to her than what was necessary at this point in his development. When questioned, Tenenbaum's answers had always been vague and imprecise. Such was the nature of her conversational skills that Ryan hadn't thought much of it at time...not until now, at least.

Jack hadn't discovered his mother's identity entirely on his own, Ryan was sure of that. But what would Tenenbaum stand to gain by giving that information to him? What would she stand to gain by defying Ryan's will?

More importantly than that, however, was the question of how much further she would go to aid his son in defying him, and that was something for which he could not stand.

A uniformed security officer waited for him at the tram station. Ryan could not recall seeing the man's presence before.

"Chief Sullivan needs to speak with you right away, sir. Says he's got information for your eyes only."

Ryan frowned. Further complications were just what this night needed.

"Tell him to meet me at Central Control. I have other matters to see to first."

* * *

**JUNE 5, 1959 — 8:02 AM**

When Jack emerged onto the streets of Fort Frolic the following day, the numb haze of his mind seemed only worse than it had ever been.

He shouldn't have expected anything less, he supposed. He could no longer remember what he had expected.

But if nothing else, at least he felt calm—no more at ease than he was the day before, but he was calm. He still didn't know how he was going to sort through the mess he had stumbled upon, but he felt some scrap of confidence that perhaps he could. He just needed to return home once again; he needed to go over the facts one more time.

He pulled his coat more tightly about himself as he passed through the atrium. It felt almost as though there was a chill in the air.

When he passed by the entrance to Poseidon Plaza, however, his attention was drawn by the scene of a uniformed officer standing guard at its door, and the small gaggle of people crowded around him.

"Can you believe this? Why'd they have to shut down the whole Plaza?"

Jack felt a shiver of dread.

"Excuse me—" He tried to catch the attention of a woman in the crowd with a tap at her shoulder. "Sorry, but—"

"Oh, Mr. Ryan!" Her face beamed with recognition the instant she looked up at his face. "It's such a pleasure to meet you—"

"Can you tell me what's going on here?" he said quickly, hoping to cut her off.

"Oh, well... I heard something about a murder?"

"Yeah, that's it," said another man nearby, putting himself in the conversation with a forward lean. "One of the strippers down at Eve's Garden. Somebody found her in the back room this morning, beaten to death, poor girl. They got the whole Plaza on lockdown while they investigate—"

"Who was it?" Jack stammered out.

"Why, it was their star dancer—Jasmine Jolene."


	12. Accusations

**JUNE 5, 1959 ****— 8:53 AM**

Jack could hardly remember the space between his departure from Fort Frolic and arrival at Central Control. He was hardly aware of anything at all until the door to his father's office brought him crashing back to reality by refusing to open when he attempted to walk through it.

Given a moment to consider it, he might have concluded that it was hardly unusual for this door in particular to be locked at any time of the day. But he was in no mood to spare any moment, not even a second's worth, for consideration.

He pounded on the door. "Let me in— I know you're there, damn it, let me in!"

He drew back after that, needing a moment not to consider the situation but rather to catch his breath. In the few seconds it took for him to decide to try again, the door finally slid open.

Jack stormed inside, through the winding corridor to where his father waited for him. Andrew Ryan sat at his desk and did not lift his gaze for his son, only stared down at something on his desk. Jack didn't care to see what it was.

Anger was coursing through him as surely as the blood that pumped through his veins, but even so, Jack could not will himself to ignore what decorum had long ago been drilled into him. Not at the moment, anyway.

"Hello, _batya_."

At that, Ryan finally lifted his head.

"Might I ask what brings you to me in such a fury?"

Ryan's voice was level and calm. It only served to spike Jack's anger even further.

"You should know exactly what's gotten me in such a _fury_, father."

Ryan looked unimpressed. "Enlighten me."

Jack had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting his next words.

"Jasmine Jolene was murdered last night."

At once, the unimpressed look melted from Ryan's face. The expression that replaced it was inscrutable in Jack's eyes, and it wasn't one he cared to decipher now.

"Murdered?"

"Murdered," repeated Jack, his hand tightening into a fist. "Beaten to death...in the very same room where I was conceived, wasn't she?"

Ryan's brow knit, which had the immediate effect of darkening his expression. "I wouldn't know."

"Wouldn't you?" Jack's fist trembled as he took a step forward. "But she took you there, didn't she? Every single night you went to see her, she took you into that back room. And you went there yourself last night—didn't you?"

Ryan scowled. "If you mean to accuse me of anything, Jack, I would strongly advise you to reconsider."

"Why should I?" Jack snapped. His heart was pounding; his voice was rising beyond his control. "Why should I think anything else? You had every reason to want her dead, didn't you? You had every reason to _kill her_ because you couldn't handle that I knew the truth—"

"Jack."

Ryan stood now, his voice easily carrying above his son's. The tight lines of his face showed that he wasn't having any of this.

"You don't know what you're talking about, _sin moj._"

"Don't I?" Jack took another step forward. It was too late for him to even consider backing down now. "Or is it just that I know too much? Just tell me why—was it to keep me from finding out anything else about her? Or was it just to punish me?"

"Don't be a _fool_, Jack." Ryan stepped out from his desk, coming a step closer to his son. "Do you truly understand just what it is that you're accusing me of doing, or are you so blinded by your willingness to defy me that you'll believe any preposterous idea someone puts in your head?"

Keeping with what seemed to be a common theme for the past few days, Jack's stomach turned. The gravity of the fact that he was shouting down his own father finally began to dawn on him, as did the thought he had briefly entertained just the other day: that the act of confronting Andrew Ryan might just be the last, most idiotic thing he ever did.

But he couldn't stand down now. Above all else, he would not let himself stand down.

"No one put this in my head," he said, barely managing to keep the shake out of his voice. "No one but myself."

"Oh, is that right?" Ryan only mocked him with feigned surprise. "You came to that conclusion all on your own? Or did your friend _Atlas_ help you along?"

In that moment, it felt as though someone had pulled the floor out from beneath Jack's feet.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"_Don__'t_ you?" Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Doesn't feel good, does it? But I know you're lying to me, _sin moj._ All your talk of some arbitrary _standard of living_, of _charity_—you didn't come up with any of that on your own. Those words came straight from the parasite's mouth."

The sting of his nails digging into his palms reminded Jack to keep calm, but it was a struggle. "I don't— You can't know that. I went to Pauper's Drop, I was there, I saw for _myself_—I made that decision _myself_, damn it!"

Ryan took a deep breath through his nose. Then he turned back to his desk.

"Perhaps you did," he said quietly. "But can the same be said for Diane?"

For the first time that day, Jack felt himself truly shaken with confusion.

"Diane?" What could he mean by that? "What does she have to do with this?"

Ryan picked up something from his desk—a pair of large photos, it seemed—and tossed them at Jack's feet. Jack had to kneel to take a closer look.

The images were grainy and in black and white, evidently print-outs from a security camera, and depicted a gaggle of people afoot in some windowless corridor. Clearly among them was Diane, a revolver held haphazardly in her hand.

"Sullivan installed cameras in the emergency access tunnels to catch Atlas's bandits at their work." Ryan's tone was flat, matter-of-fact, as he stepped towards Jack. "This is what he found upon reviewing the footage."

Jack looked up from where he knelt, only to see his father towering over him. "I... I didn't know."

"Did you drive her to Atlas's side, Jack? Or did you lead her there?"

"I don't—"

"Answer me, _sin moj._"

Jack's hands shook.

"I _didn__'t know_, okay? I didn't know she was involved, I didn't—" The pounding of his heart and the shadow of his father made it difficult, but he managed to rise to his feet again. "She told me she was done with me—that she never wanted to see me again—how was I supposed to know—"

In the same moment that Jack was steady on his feet, Ryan struck him across the face.

Jack staggered. The pain of it was purely secondary compared to the shock, to the blood that pounded in his ears and the adrenaline singing in his veins, pumping straight to his brain and telling him wrong, wrong, you're doing _wrong, what a waste of money you are, now do it all over again—_

He staggered, everything in his state of mind suddenly shaken out of sorts and comprehension, and he might have fallen if not for his father grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.

"You did this, Jack."

Ryan's words struck him like needles pinning him apart. His mind felt torn open, shaken out and laid bare. He was trapped. There was no escape for him now.

"_You_ did this—you took her from me, defied my wishes and dallied with her heart, and now look where she is. Look at what she's become, _sin moj._"

It was a struggle to turn his head to where the photos still lay on the floor. He strained, but could not see.

"I can't—"

"She's a _parasite_, Jack—no better than Atlas, no better than the rest of his men. You did this to her, Jack... You took the woman I loved, and you _did this to her!_"

Ryan released him then, sending Jack stumbling back into the wall. Never, never had he seen his father in such a rage. Jack felt dizzy, lightheaded, nerves alight with shock and fear and every instinct in his body telling him to _run_—but he was rooted to the spot.

Ryan turned his back to him, turned to lean against his desk, gripping its edge with white-knuckled fists.

"You understand nothing, Jack... Do you have _any idea_ how easily I could have had you destroyed? And yet you live."

Jack's tongue felt too heavy, his throat too tight for any words of reply. He barely felt like he could continue to stand.

"I granted you more than life—I granted you a life in _my city_. I gave you the same right to live here that all others had to earn. I gave you _everything_ that every other soul in this city would have had to _earn_ by the sweat of their brow. I gave you an opportunity that no one else could possibly have—the opportunity to bear my legacy, to take my name as your own. And this... Is this how you've repaid me, Jack?"

He wanted to speak, but he could not. His fear stirred his thoughts, yet stilled his tongue.

"After all I've done for you—after all I've _given_ you, you _dare_... You would truly _dare_ to throw it back in my face? To act as though I've done nothing for you? To take what is mine and throw it away? To accuse me of _murdering your mother?_"

His heart squeezed in his chest. He wondered if this was how it would feel when he was about to die. He wondered how long it would be before he found out for himself.

"Perhaps, as you say, I might have had some reason for wanting her silence... But if you _truly_ think I would have her _killed_ to keep you from seeing her, then you _truly_ know so much less than you claim."

He still didn't believe that. He couldn't believe it. But he felt no power to argue any further.

Ryan finally turned back to face him. His face was livid with rage.

"Leave me, _sin moj._" He pointed towards the door. "Get out of my sight."

Jack's knees nearly buckled under his weight as he finally staggered away. Fear lightened his steps, and that fear did not begin to abate until after he was long gone from Central Control.


	13. Splicing Up

**JUNE 6, 1959 ****— 1:11 AM**

For a great many hours after the argument with his father, Jack did not dare to leave the relative safety of his apartment. He sat behind locked doors with his pistol at his side, waiting for the inevitable moment when the scientists or another assortment of Ryan's men would come to dispose of him.

But that moment never came. Perhaps he had underestimated his father's patience; perhaps he had overestimated his father's willingness to destroy him.

The latter of these didn't seem as likely in his mind, not least of all because of how convinced he remained of his father's involvement in the death of Jasmine Jolene.

It was just too convenient. Sure, Jack didn't doubt that there were plenty of people in this city possessing the ability and wherewithal to have killed her in such a brutal way, but he could think of no motive likelier than Andrew Ryan's.

Andrew Ryan's motive for denying it, however, was less clear. Knowing how easily he could silence Jack for having discovered the truth, it wasn't clear at all. The only reason that came to Jack's mind was that he truly did have nothing to do with it—but no, he wasn't ready to believe that just yet. He wouldn't be ready to believe that at all, he was certain, until he could find some concrete proof that Ryan was not involved.

But how would he find that?

He could ask Sullivan—but no, that would be useless. His father had the entire security force at his beck and call, particularly Sullivan. Even if they told him they suspected the involvement of another party, Jack had no way of truly taking them at their word.

He could investigate for himself, he supposed. But there was the same problem with the security: how could he be certain that they hadn't removed any evidence from the scene? How could he know that they hadn't scrubbed the place clean of any sign Ryan had ever been there a single day in his life?

He couldn't possibly know for sure, could he? Unless his father finally admitted it himself, unless he had some way of knowing exactly what went on in that room that night, knowing exactly what went through his mother's mind in her final moments...

Jack rubbed his hands over his face, head sinking to his knees where he sat on the edge of his bed, and rubbed and rubbed until he felt the skin might peel from his bones. How frightened could she have been when she knew she was going to die? How scared and confused and pained could those last moments have been, knowing her own death was imminent and yet not knowing why?

Those questions weren't ones he wanted to consider now, not when there was nothing he could do about them. But still they swirled about in the chaos of his thoughts, her imagined screams echoing and multiplying against the walls of his mind.

His head throbbed. He found himself gripping the edge of his bureau, having somehow paced the full length of his room without being consciously aware of it. Perhaps that should have alarmed him, but he didn't care.

_How frightened must she have been . . ._

A loud cry, frustrated and broken, summoned itself up from his throat as he cleared the bureau's surface with one mighty sweep of his arm, sending its scattered contents crashing to the floor. He didn't want to think about it, but he was powerless to stop.

He was powerless to stop now, just as he'd been powerless to stop anything from happening to her—just as he'd been powerless to affect anything of worth in this entire damn city, in his whole damn life.

His head sank to the bureau's edge, just as his eyes shut tight against the barrage of doubt that assailed him. When he finally dared to open them again, a red glow sat in the corner of his eye.

He turned to see the plasmid Atlas had given him, knocked free from its case and lying bare on the floor. He still hadn't taken it; its side effects still warded him off.

Its side effects...

_But then people start goin' mad, and then they start seein' ghosts . . ._

A jolt of realization shuddered down Jack's spine, enough to make him bolt upright. _Ghosts_: hallucinations of another life in moments previous, memories borne and shared by ADAM as it flowed from one set of veins to the next...

No—no, that would never work, would it? Atlas had given him this plasmid some days ago, while Jolene's body had only been discovered the morning previous. It was impossible for this flask to carry any memories of hers. Even beyond this flask in particular, it couldn't be possible for her to have been...no, there wasn't enough time.

But he knew how quickly the gatherers did their work, how much ADAM had to be harvested and recycled and repackaged on a daily basis just to meet Rapture's growing demand from day to day to day. Perhaps it was impossible for her genetic material to be borne in this flask, but that didn't negate the possibility of its circulation throughout this city even now.

It was a slim chance, an incredibly slim chance. But the fact that there was a chance at all left Jack with little choice but to take it.

**JUNE 7, 1959 — 5:26 AM**

"Give me the freshest juice you got."

"Yes sir, comin' right up. Got this batch fresh off the production line..."

There was no way of knowing the shopkeep's claim to be true or not. But Jack had no choice but to take the man at his word.

Jack kept his scarf wound tightly about his face as he slid the money across the counter and slipped the hypo of EVE into his pocket. After everything else that had happened, the last thing he needed was word getting back to his father about his dabbling with plasmids.

Not that he'd actually taken it yet. The plasmid was tucked away into the inner pocket of his coat, nestled against his heart and away from pilfering hands. He needed to be certain he was ready before taking the plunge.

Fort Frolic was, for the most part, still. The hour was early enough that the doors to the shops were shuttered, and the only traffic in the corridors belonged to the evening's last stragglers emerging from Sir Prize and Pharaoh's Fortune. Jack might have fit in perfectly among them if not for the fact he was headed in the opposite direction, down the glass-tunneled path to Poseidon Plaza and in the direction of Eve's Garden.

His father's old command still echoed somewhere in the back of his mind, quickening the pulse of his heart as the club's brightly lit sign came into view. But it wasn't enough to slow his steps now.

A wooden security barricade still blocked the entrance on the ground floor—no great obstacle for him to move past, but not one he felt like risking, even with the relative peace and quiet of the surrounding area. If any officers came back to find it disturbed...no, that wouldn't do. He went up the stairs, down the hall to check the upper entrance: locked, but not barricaded. This, he could deal with.

Much of the time before his public debut—the time when he was still a test subject under development in Ryan's, or perhaps Fontaine's laboratories—had since been obscured by his conscious memory, and on most days, he was glad for that. But sometimes flashes of recollection leached through the barriers of his mind, spurred by some distant recognition of whatever was at hand—something like deja vu, perhaps, but he knew it was something more than just a trick of the mind. This time it was the lock at the door, its peculiarly Rapturian construction coming apart easily in his dexterous hands. He could not consciously remember hacking any sort of lock, much less having any reason to have ever done so, yet he knew that he had done this before; he knew without question that this was something he unquestionably knew how to do.

It was the same sort of feeling that nagged in his mind whenever he felt the weight of his pistol in his hand: failing to remember any instance in which he had fired it, yet knowing that he knew how. It was something he tried desperately not to dwell upon.

The door slid open with a loud rattle, sending a clattering echo down the length of the hall. Jack froze, feeling every part of him suddenly tense...but nothing came of it. It was too early yet for anyone to be looking in the direction of the strip club, after all.

Jack took a cautious step inside, and made sure that the door slid shut again before he stepped any further. The last time he'd been here, though he'd only caught a glimpse of it all before being ejected from the premises, the whole club had been in full swing: girls dancing on the stage below, carousing with patrons at the surrounding tables, all while drinks flowed freely at the bar to the side. A haze of cigarette smoke had hung in the air, and one remained even now, though it looked far more eerie in the dim light and quiet emptiness of the place.

He took wary, quiet steps down the creaky stairs that wound behind the bar. There was no sign yet of anyone here, none that he could see at least, but he could never afford to be too careful.

His eyes had to strain in the dark before he found the back door, the one which led to the fabled back room. When he found it, his steps were heavy, but deliberate. He couldn't slow down now.

No matter what awaited him in that room—the room where his life began, where hers was cut short—he could not back down now.

His hand trembled at the door handle. In that moment, the ADAM at his breast and the EVE in his pocket felt heavier than the weight of the world upon his back, to say nothing of the ocean upon his shoulders. But he could not stand down now.

He opened the door.

The room was larger than he might have expected, though in truth, he didn't know what he expected at all. The bed sat atop a dais towards the back, where it was surrounded by four pillars bedecked with billowing red curtains. The only light in the room came filtering through a great arched window directly above the bed itself, softened and distorted and colored with blues and greens by the water beyond the glass and the neon signs even further beyond that, but it was plenty enough light to see the portrait that hung against the far wall—_Andrew Ryan's Favorite Gal_. It was plenty enough light to see the telltale dark stains on the bedspread and the surrounding floor.

Jack didn't know if he was ready for this. He had hoped he would be, yet doubt still plagued him even now. But he was already long past the point of no return.

He reached into his coat, drew out the hypo full of glowing, pulsing ADAM, carefully removed the cap from its long, thick needle, and just as carefully rolled up one of his sleeves.

It was now or never.

Finding a vein in the broad muscle of his forearm wasn't quite as difficult as he'd anticipated, and the pinching pain as he slipped the needle in wasn't quite so unbearable as he'd feared. The weight of the syringe and the resistance of the plunger beneath his thumb felt almost natural. But what immediately followed was none of the above.

A sudden swarm of pain gathered at the site where he'd injected himself, swirling into a storm before flooding through the rest of him, bursting along each and every one of his nerves as jolts of electricity rocketed through his veins. His field of vision swam with tinges of red as the world pulsed and swayed and toppled before him, crashing down until he realized he was the one crashing down instead, crashing to the floor where his hands uselessly clawed and scrabbled for purchase. For all the ringing in his ears, it was only by the hoarseness of his throat that he might have realized he was screaming, but he took no notice. His body was tearing itself apart, he was certain, all the way down to the cellular level, and it was all he could do to hang on as desperately as he could manage.

It seemed as though an eternity had passed in that room before the pain began to abate, and it was only then that he could finally remember—_EVE._ He wasn't finished yet. Now that he had ADAM coursing through his veins—pulsing throughout every part of him, sending up sparks behind his eyes, tearing at his raw and bloodied nerves with each pass—he had to take the next step.

His newly horizontal position on the floor made his reach uncomfortably difficult, but he managed to fumble the glowing blue hypo out of his coat pocket. He flinched more sharply this time when the needle broke his skin, shuddered at the sensation of the plunger under his thumb, and when the EVE flooded into him, his senses were overtaken even more greatly than before. It swept over every nerve just as the ADAM had done earlier, filling him with an indescribable sensation that nearly lifted him to his feet—but no, it was too much, far too much, he was overfull, ready to burst from the inside out...

The emptied hypo fell from his shaking hands as he pressed them to his face. If he pressed any harder, he felt, then perhaps he could reach right into his skull, pull out his brain and wring it dry. This was a mistake. No part of his body felt like it was under his control any longer. Bile rose in his throat; he could hardly breathe without feeling like he was going to explode. He'd made a terrible mistake. His father had been right to warn him away from this stuff. His father had been right, he'd been right about everything and Jack, oh, he'd been so wrong, so terribly wrong about _everything_—

"_Who are you?"_

The voice was echoing and accusatory. Jack was frightened to lower his hands from his face, to see who had discovered him like this. It was over, everything was all over from here.

"_What are you__...__ Oh, god, no!"_

The voice echoed again. This time Jack managed to realize the voice echoed not from behind him, but rather from his front—but then again, was it really in front of him, or was it coming from his own mind?

Pain—another burst of pain suddenly ghosted throughout his body, just as he heard a woman's scream. Jack tore his hands away from his face to see the shape of a man—indistinct, but doubtlessly a man—hunched over the bed, wielding something heavy in his hand. A woman lay beneath him, attempting in vain to shield herself against his blows.

"No—" Jack's voice was little more than a croak, and the effort to speak nearly made him retch, but he couldn't stop himself. "No..."

"_No, no, please, god, no, don't—"_

Every movement was agony, but Jack could not remain still. He pushed himself to his feet, staggered forward, and reached for the shape of his mother's murderer.

"_Sorry, doll, it's nothin' personal."_

The assailant's voice was cold, callous, and punctuated by her screams.

"_I just got some loose ends that need tyin' up."_

"Stop—"

Just as Jack launched himself forward at the attacker, the ghostly visions disappeared from his sight, leaving him face to face with nothing but the sight of his mother's blood-stained sheets.

His hands gripped the edge of the bed so tightly he thought he might tear it in two. There was nothing he could have done. He could never have stopped this. He could never have kept his mother from being killed by...

Who was that?

The realization was cold as it sank into him: the voice of the man who had murdered his mother was not the voice of his father.

That didn't remove the possibility of his father hiring someone else to do his dirty work for him, of course. But this new fact coupled with his denial of the act made it seem to Jack as though the truth was slipping further and further away from his grasp.

In that moment, as Jack attempted to make any sense of what shape the situation had now taken in his mind, the lights in the room suddenly flared to life, blinding him and sending more bursts of pain shuddering throughout every part of his body.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The voice did not echo, not from anywhere to his front or inside his mind. A pang of fear rippled throughout him as Jack turned to see its source: a man stood in the doorway, a man of living flesh and blood, bearing a heavy-looking club in his hand.

"Please—" It was all Jack could do to stagger forward, hands aloft to show he meant no harm; he didn't know what he was asking the man to do, but it was the only word that would come to him. "Please..."

"What the fuck do you think you're—" The man started to advance, but his words and steps stopped short once he noticed the empty hypos on the floor. "ADAM... You've got ADAM?"

Jack was now close enough, his mind was now clear enough to see the twisted growths along the man's jaw. He'd made a terrible mistake.

"No— No, I..."

His eyes fell across the club in the man's hand, across the dark stains along its blunt end, and recognition took hold of him—but no, no. This man's voice was not the same he had just heard. It wasn't even close.

"Give it to me!"

In the brief moment of Jack's confusion, the man had found an opportunity to heft his club aloft and swing it. Jack barely brought up his arms in time to shield his head from the blow, but the strike was still more than enough to send him reeling back with a pained cry. He stumbled to the ground, pain and confusion and fear clouding all of his senses, leaving his mind panicked and unable to coordinate any manner of self-defense, until a burst of adrenaline cleared his vision well enough to see the man moving in for a second hit.

It felt automatic: his arm snaking out in the man's direction, shooting a bright blue bolt of lightning out from his fingertips to electrocute the man where he stood.

His loud cry and shuddering, seizing movements were all it took to stir the rest of Jack's mind into clarity, to propel him into action. This was a fight for his life. He could not afford to make a mistake. He pushed himself off the ground and launched himself at his attacker, tackling him to the floor, pinning him down with all his weight and punching him in the face to keep him out of commission. He could not afford to leave any threat standing. His hands wrapped around the man's neck, his thumbs slotted against either side of his windpipe, and he pushed down with all his might. It was so easy. He had never done this before, never, yet it felt so natural. Even with the man's gnarled and knobby hands clawing at his face, even with the flickering glow and look of hate in his bulging eyes, it was so, so easy to crush his throat.

It wasn't until some moments after the man's clawing hands fell away that Jack finally released him. It wasn't until another moment later that Jack fully realized what he'd just done.

He pushed himself off and scrambled backwards on hands and feet, as far away from the corpse as he could manage until his back hit the rise of the dais behind him. Panic flooded him all over again as his insides threatened to turn themselves out, sending more bile up his throat and into his mouth.

_What had he done?_

It was purely self-defense, he might have reasoned, but there was no room for reason in his screaming mind, no room for anything at all but panic and the instinctive urge to flee. He didn't know where he could possibly flee to, who or what or where could possibly provide him refuge at a moment like this, but running from the scene was all he could manage, and running was all he did.


	14. Apologies

**JUNE 7, 1959 ****— 7:49 AM**

The cramped tenements of Artemis Suites were far from Diane McClintock's first choice of residence. Indeed, they were far from the splendor of what quarters she had occupied in weeks previous. But being here meant living free of the Ryans' influence, as much as she could possibly manage, and that alone was enough to keep her going.

She couldn't be sure whether or not it helped that, in some ways, Apollo Square reminded her of the home she'd left long ago: the dank alleys that were rarely safe for any girl like her to tread, people sitting out in the street all hours of the day, the feeling of desperation that hung constantly in the air. But at least in her memories, no matter how bad things got, the sun was always shining from one day to the next.

Then again, it seemed that it didn't take much these days to remind her of her life on the surface, even the darker parts she'd sometimes prefer not to remember, the days before she had found herself swept into the lap of luxury. They were memories she always sought to quell as quickly as possible. Rapture was her home now, even if parts of it no longer shone as beautifully as they had before. She had made the choice to come here, and it was a choice she was determined to uphold. No matter how bad things seemed to get down here, she wouldn't waste any more time longing for the life she once had—she would only drive forward instead, to better this city and truly make it the paradise that everyone had been promised.

At least, this was the sort of feeling that Atlas had inspired in her. Some days she found it more difficult to believe than others; some days she found it difficult to believe at all that she could help, even in any small part, to bring about the kind of change that Atlas was fighting for. But at this point, she felt as though she had little choice but to fight on.

When Atlas had showed her how to keep a steady aim with the revolver she carried at her side—when she leveled that revolver herself to shoot out the watchful eye of one of Ryan's security cameras—she knew there was no turning back.

She picked her way through the littered street that led to the Square, stepping briskly over spent syringes and broken cobblestones, and stopped only to drop a few dollars into the outstretched cup of a shivering woman in the street. She had a mission to accomplish today, all on her own. She had a purpose set before her unlike anything she had ever known in her life.

It was all for the greater good, she reasoned, and that was what quickened her steps. That was what held her chin aloft despite the squalor that surrounded her, despite the sorrow of the people around her, despite the life of comfort and ease she had chosen to leave behind. It was all for the greater good, and she was going to make herself a part of it.

As she crossed through the Square, a large man suddenly barreled into her with a drunken stagger.

"Hey!" She pushed him away with a shout, then immediately, instinctively patted herself down to ensure she hadn't just been pickpocketed. "Watch where you're going, you big creep—"

"Diane?"

The broad hand that caught her wrist had a familiar grip. When she looked into the man's face, she was startled to see Jack Ryan staring back at her.

"Jack?"

The look on his face was not the one he wore when he was drunk, which Diane was just as startled to see. It was haunted and hollow, and in his eyes, widened with fear, was an uncanny blue glow.

"Jack, what—" Too many questions came to Diane's mind for her to remember what she had told him upon their last meeting. "What happened to you? What are you doing here?"

"Atlas—" He grasped her hand with both of his; his touch was clammier than she remembered, and a telltale static jolt seemed to jump from his fingertips. "Where— I need to—"

"Jack, have you been _splicing?_"

"Please, Diane, I need—" He was shaking like a leaf. "Atlas— I just need to see him, please, I need..."

The thought of a man like Jack, with all the dedication she'd seen him give to his father's ways, having any business this urgent with a man like Atlas was inconceivable in her mind. Then again, so was the thought of Jack using plasmids, or the thought of him ending up in such a state in Apollo Square of all places.

Diane frowned. This wouldn't be an easy decision for her to make, but she couldn't in good conscience make any other choice.

"You've got no business seeing Atlas like this," she said curtly, wrenching her hand out of Jack's grip to take him by the arm instead. "You've got no business being here at all, you know that? Come on."

Jack huddled close as Diane tugged him away from the Square, out of sight and mind from those more opportunistic than herself, and said not a word as she led him on. She was grateful for that much, if nothing else.

* * *

Jack's apartment was just the same as Diane had ever remembered it: lavish enough for any son of the city's founder, but looking oddly unlived-in despite the fact she knew he spent much of his time here. There were almost no furnishings to be found that hadn't come with the apartment as it was built, and those that were served some kind of practical purpose, such as a record player on the mantle and a radio that sat unused in the corner. There was nothing particularly unique in the place, not a thing to suggest what kind of man Jack might have been before he had descended to Rapture.

It wasn't something Diane had often considered during any of her other visits to his home, but now it seemed to stick out like a sore thumb.

Still, there were more pressing matters at hand. Dragging Jack through the bulkhead and down the street on foot had been difficult enough, but lugging him into his bed and making sure he stayed there was a chore in itself. He'd kept muttering about Atlas the whole while, all without saying exactly why he needed to see him so badly.

Diane was used to the antics of plasmid addicts by now; their ravings and violent outbursts were a part of day-to-day life in Apollo Square, after all. But this delirium that had seized Jack wasn't quite like any she had seen before. Even more unsettling than that was the fact that, in the entire time she had known him, she had never seen him so evidently gripped by fear—or perhaps what was truly unsettling was the question of what had made him so afraid.

That was far from the only question weighing on her mind, of course. She was also left wondering why she was still here, looking after the man like she was his damn mother. She'd meant what she said when she told him that she never wanted to see him again; in fact, what she should have said was that she wanted nothing to do with him ever again, because that would have been even closer to the truth.

Yet somehow, some part of her couldn't bear to see him left to the wolves, no matter how much he might have deserved it. She hated it, but she couldn't bring herself to deny it.

Besides, she reasoned with herself, she had originally been headed in this direction anyway. Her plans for the day might have been delayed for a bit, but by no means had they been thrown off course.

She could afford to spend some time waiting up for him.

She'd just finished her second cigarette by the time Jack finally emerged from the bedroom, stumbling to the doorway and pressing a hand to his head.

"You look like hell."

He lifted his head to look at her, and squinted in confusion. "Diane?"

She delicately looked away as she stubbed out her cigarette. "I suppose it just figures, doesn't it?" Then she glared at him. "Were you blacked out that whole time?"

His brow furrowed. It seemed to be a struggle for him to remember.

"No— No, I remember..." Something changed in his face as he trailed off, and he pressed his hand to his mouth before he continued. "I remember..."

"I hope you remember whatever it was you spliced up with," she said sharply. "That should be reason enough for you not to do it again."

He said nothing to that, only kept his hand at his mouth while his eyes fell away.

"Jack..." She got up from where she sat to step closer to him. "What were you _thinking?_ You know what that stuff does to people in the long run. What does a guy like you need to splice up for, anyway?"

For a long moment, Jack said nothing. When he did speak, it was without moving his hand or looking at her again.

"Atlas gave it to me."

This time, it was Diane's brow that scrunched in confusion. Then she finally remembered—the first time she had ever met Atlas, he had given her that note to pass along to Jack, hadn't he? What had it said? Was that what led to this?

"Why would Atlas do a thing like that?"

"He said... Because he wanted to be my friend."

Something about that explanation didn't quite ring true in Diane's mind. Atlas hadn't ever spoken of either Ryan in any terms other than as the royalty of Rapture that was destined to be deposed, at least not where she could hear. What could he possibly be aiming at by giving Jack a plasmid, of all things?

She had a suspicion, albeit a small one, albeit one she didn't want to fully consider at the moment. But the idea that perhaps he had meant for Jack to end up in this sort of state was difficult for her to ignore.

"Well—" She shook her head. "He should have known better. _You_ should have known better. The next time you end up in the middle of Apollo Square in a spliced-up stupor, you just might not be so lucky, you got that?"

Still, he didn't look up at her. His reply this time was barely more than a murmur:

"Sorry."

She took a deep breath. "Don't apologize to me," she said as she turned to leave. "Just take better care of yourself in the future."

"No, Diane—"

He grabbed her wrist before she could walk away. His grip was weak, weaker than Diane had ever known him to have, but it was enough to stop her for the moment.

"I'm sorry...about everything."

When she turned back to him, it was with a thin frown.

"You'll have to be more specific than that."

It was almost startling to see Jack like this, so obviously shaken in his confidence that he could barely keep eye contact with her. It wasn't quite enough to spur Diane's sympathy, but it was enough to hold her attention.

"I'm sorry about...everything that I did, okay?" He released her wrist, seeming to think better of holding onto her, but he was far from finished. "I should have treated you better, I should have—I should never have gotten between you and my father, I should _never_ have done that, I shouldn't have—I shouldn't have taken you from him, and whatever I did to drive you to Atlas instead, I shouldn't have done that either—"

"Oh, Jack!" She couldn't take any more of this. "Don't be an idiot! My joining up with Atlas had absolutely nothing to do with you, you know that? I'm fighting for him because it was my choice, not because of anything you did! And the same goes for everything I did with you—I chose to be with you, just like I chose to be with your father, and you never _took me_ from him because I never _belonged_ to either one of you! Do you understand that?"

He made no protest. Something in him looked meeker than she had ever seen, like something was broken on some fundamental level inside him. It was something of a struggle for her not to be swayed by it.

"I'm sorry."

If anything, that only managed to strengthen her resolve.

"I don't want to hear it," she said brusquely, turning again to retrieve her handbag from where she'd been sitting. "I just hope you've learned something from all this, Mr. Ryan—and I hope that the next girl you fool around with gets treated with a little more respect."

He said nothing more to her as she went for the door. Somehow, that alone was enough to still her...well, that and another thought that slowly occurred to her, rolling across the sky of her mind like a darkened cloud.

"If you really mean that you're sorry..." She turned back; he still stood in the doorway, still watching her. "Then do me a favor, won't you—sober yourself up, and stay away from Olympus Heights for the next few days."

If Jack questioned her why, Diane didn't hear it. She turned back to the door and left Jack's apartment behind her one last time. She still had work to do, after all.


	15. Tenenbaum

**JUNE 8, 1959 ****— 5:14 PM**

By the time Jack turned up on Brigid Tenenbaum's doorstep the following day, Diane's final words to him had been long forgotten. Much heavier matters weighed on his mind instead.

The sight of the man he had encountered in Eve's Garden, the look of pure hate that had burned in his bulging eyes, still hung somewhere in the back of Jack's head. No matter how much he tried to put it out, it still remained. When he closed his eyes, it was the only image the projector of his mind would cast upon the darkness—that, and the ghostly vision he'd seen of his mother's murder.

He rang the doorbell to Tenenbaum's apartment first. When some seconds passed with no answer, he proceeded to rap at the door instead, hoping the sound of his fist pounding against the metal door would drown out the echoes in his mind, echoes of the man's electrocuted screams.

When Tenenbaum finally answered the door, it was with a raised eyebrow.

"_Guten tag_, Jack."

He nodded to her. For all the fortitude he had summoned up just to come here, words suddenly seemed at a loss to him.

"Hello, Dr. Tenenbaum."

She looked him over with an appraising eye, then folded her arms over her chest. It occurred to Jack that she was without her usual white lab coat—and of course she would be, for this was her home, after all. But it was still enough of a rare sight for him that it stuck out as remarkable in his mind.

"This is..." She paused for a moment, as though searching for the right word. "Highly unusual, Jack. For you to come to my home."

"I know," he said quickly, doing his best not to sound sheepish, "and I'm sorry for that. But there's something I need to..." This time it was his turn to pause; he shook his head before he continued. "I need to ask you some things."

"And you could not do this in my office because...?"

Too many answers came to his mind at that: because her office lacked privacy, because he needed her full attention, because the answers he needed were perhaps time-sensitive and he'd already wasted part of the day and he couldn't trust himself to make it all the way to the compound in the sort of state he was in. But more importantly than that...

"Because my father can't know about this."

A look of understanding came into her face. But a look of understanding when worn by Brigid Tenenbaum was hardly the same as a look of mercy or care, and so Jack was left waiting on tenterhooks all the same for her reply.

After an excruciatingly long moment of uncertainty, she finally stepped back. "Come."

He only nodded to show his gratitude as he made his way inside. Her apartment was more lavish than most, even for the upscale Mercury Suites, encompassing two stories all on its own. But it was on the first floor they remained, and it was into a parlor that Tenenbaum led him. It looked less like a parlor, however, and more like another of her many workspaces, with papers pinned to the walls and strewn across any flat surface. Jack didn't dare to try taking a closer look at their contents.

Tenenbaum sat, retrieving a still-lit cigarette from an ashtray beside her chair. She watched Jack until he took a seat as well.

"Talk."

Jack took a deep breath. It was still somewhat difficult for him to find words, but he had no choice but to try.

"Today, I..." Another deep breath. "I visited the shooting range today—the one near the carnival, you know."

There was no apparent recognition on her part, but she nodded anyway.

"As it turns out..." The weight of the gun still lingered in his hands, and he wrung them together in an effort to shake it off. "It turns out I'm quite the marksman. In every caliber they had for rent."

"Congratulations." Tenenbaum's tone was flat, and her face remained as impassive as ever.

A ghostly pulse fluttered somewhere beneath the pad of his thumb. He wrung his hands even tighter.

"I'd never fired a gun before in my life." Somehow he managed to keep his voice level. "Not as far as I can remember anyway."

Still, Tenenbaum's face was impassive. But she looked away this time, looking to the ashtray as she flicked ash off the dwindling end of her cigarette.

"Some people are preternaturally talented at this sort of thing."

"Don't patronize me, Dr. Tenenbaum." The words came out as a snap, but still he kept his voice level. "I couldn't remember having ever fired that gun even once in my life, but I still knew how to do it—I knew _exactly_ what to do, and I knew exactly what to do with all of those other guns, too." He broke his hands away from each other to grip the arms of his chair as he leaned forward, closer to where Tenenbaum sat across from him. "Why would I know that? I know that there are lots of things I don't remember, things you and Suchong did to me that I can't remember for damn good reason—but why _that?_"

Tenenbaum didn't answer for some time, nor did she look up to him again.

"Your father would not want you to know this."

"I don't care!" He caught himself from shouting, but only just barely. "I don't care— I have a right to know, no matter what he thinks. It's _my_ life, not his, goddamnit—even if he is the one who paid for it!"

At that, she finally looked up at him again, brow knit in an expression that seemed more to Jack like sorrow than anything else. The reason for it was beyond him, and he wasn't fully certain why, but he felt unsettled by it.

"The things your father has kept from you..." She glanced down, seeming uncertain. The idea of her being uncertain only managed to unsettle Jack even more. "There are many things your father keeps from you, perhaps more than you know. But he only does this for your own protection, Jack."

Something thudded deep in his chest, and Jack couldn't be sure whether it was his own heart. The question of whatever his father could possibly be protecting him from was too great for him to fathom—for now, at least.

"I don't need his protection," he said quietly, struggling to keep a quake from his voice. "Not if I'm going to be the man he wants me to be."

One of Tenenbaum's hands knotted in the smooth fabric of her skirt.

"That, I think, is precisely why he wishes to protect you."

That something thudded again. He shook his head; this was hardly what mattered at the moment.

"I already know one thing he tried to keep from me." Jack lowered his head, trying to gain eye contact with her again. "But I think I deserve to know more than that—and you're the only one who can help me, Dr. Tenenbaum."

She looked up one more time, and her eyes slightly narrowed.

"Are you certain of this?"

From that, Jack had a feeling he might be making a mistake. But he had no choice but to nod.

"I am."

Her lips pressed into a thin line as she paused for a long moment of contemplation.

"Very well. Some things... I will tell you what I can, because your protection is something I value as well."

_Some things—_it was a better result than Jack might have hoped for. But something in her tone left him waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"However, in exchange, I must ask you for your help."

And there it was.

"Help with what?"

Tenenbaum took a deep breath through her nose. Whatever it was, it seemed to be something she needed resolve to ask of him.

"Help me to rescue the Little Sisters—to undo what harm has been done to them."

At those two words—_Little Sisters_—Jack felt as though the bottom of his stomach had dropped into an endless pit.

His hand squeezed the armrest. "What—what do you mean, _rescue_ them?"

"I mean exactly what I just told you, Jack." Where he was used to seeing a look of weariness in Tenenbaum's face and her eyes, there was now some fierce determination instead. But her gaze soon broke again, and that odd look of sorrow came over her instead. "Those children... I have done to them many grave wrongs. I cannot bear to see them suffer any longer."

Jack's head swam, much as it did whenever the thought of the Little Sisters came to him in any context, but even more so now. "I don't..." He shook his head again. "How? My father—he would never..."

"I do not care what he thinks," she said bitterly. "A feeling you know well, yes? But whatever profit he makes off his precious sales of ADAM is not worth the suffering of those little girls. I had hoped he would put a stop to it all after Fontaine, but..." Her face twisted into a dark scowl. "Your father no longer matters to me, not where the girls are concerned. I care only to put an end to their pain."

He found himself struggling to follow the line of her logic. It was horrible to him what those little girls went through, perhaps more horrible to him than anyone else, but without ADAM...without _them_, Rapture would likely cease to function, and how could he allow that to happen?

"I still don't understand."

"I am not asking for you to understand, Jack. I am only asking for you to help me."

Doubt once again began to take hold of him. He wanted whatever answers she had for him, he wanted them more dearly than anything else, but what she asked of him sounded like more than he could in good conscience give her.

"But how?"

She took one last drag off her cigarette and stubbed it out before she answered him. "I have developed a plasmid specifically for this: it destroys the slug inside the girl and neutralizes her mental conditioning, all without causing her any harm. It takes some time for their training to wear off, I have discovered, but the effects are mostly instantaneous."

"You've..." He reeled. "You _have discovered?_ You mean to tell me you've already been—?"

"I have already freed several little ones from their torment, yes."

Tenenbaum stared at Jack with a hardness in her eyes that dared him to tell her she was crazy or wrong to have gone to such lengths already. He didn't dare.

"They are hidden away from your father's eyes, and this keeps them safe for now... But they are orphans all, and there is no place in Rapture where I can hide them forever. If they are to have any chance at leading happy lives without becoming those...those _creatures_ again, they must be released to the surface."

_The surface._ Something twisted in Jack's gut at the words, something remarkably close to fear.

"How..." It was unfathomable to him, the thought of anyone ever leaving Rapture. "How are you going to do that?"

She hesitated for a long moment, giving Jack another one of those hardened looks.

"It will be difficult... This is why I need your help." She crossed one of her legs over the other. "But until I can be certain that I have your help, I can tell you no more."

The decision loomed before him like the prospect of crossing an impossibly vast plateau. The promise of the truth glimmered in the distance like a far-off oasis, but how could he know with certainty that the passage would be safe?

"Dr. Tenenbaum, I can't just..." He shook his head again, more violently than before. "I don't know if I can do this."

"What did you say to me earlier? I am the only one who can help you—and you are the only one who can help me, Jack." She leaned forward, eyes narrow again. "I have already agreed to make it worth your while. There is no reason we should not be able to help each other."

"But I don't..." Jack put a hand to his face, squeezing his temples in an effort to quell the pounding in his head. "I don't know that for sure. Maybe if I pressed Dr. Suchong, or if I went digging through the archives at the compound..."

He trailed off, knowing even as he said it just how hopeless it all sounded. Tenenbaum, on the other hand, did not appear to be so easily affected.

"If that is truly what you wish, fine." Her voice was quiet now, cold and calculating, more like the Tenenbaum he knew than she had been during this entire conversation so far. "Then do not help me. Do not help them because you made a bargain with me. But help me to help them because they are like _you_, Jack—because they have suffered from my wrongdoing."

Jack felt his pulse quicken at her words, and it was not without some reluctance that he looked up at her. Comparing himself in any way to the Little Sisters was not something he had ever dared to breathe aloud, but the weight of it on his mind was an ever-constant presence, heavy enough that Tenenbaum now had his full, if not entirely willing attention.

"I have made...many great sins." Tenenbaum leaned back in her chair, drawing her gaze away again. "Sins against those little ones...and against you as well, Jack. I cannot undo all that has been done to you; that power is lost to me. But I have the power to undo what has been done to these children—and with your help, perhaps... Perhaps I may be able to amend what has been done to you as well."

_What has been done to you_—the words hung in the space between them as if given shape by Jack's confusion and doubt. Just what had been done to him that Tenenbaum would feel so sorry for him? Was that something he really wanted to know?

Despite his doubts, it took him only a moment of consideration: he had to know. He would never be able to rest until he had the truth, and until he knew with absolute certainty that he had the entire truth.

He took a deep breath as he rubbed his hands over his face. For all the surety of his decision, the gravity of it made it difficult for him to voice aloud.

"Okay," he said quietly. He hesitated to look her in the eye, but he did so regardless. "I'll do it... Whatever you need from me, I'll do it. But I want to know everything."

Tenenbaum held his gaze as she sighed deeply. It seemed to be a sigh of relief, but where Tenenbaum was concerned, Jack could never be sure.

"_Gut._" She stood, then crossed the room to sift through a pile of papers on a side table. "_Sehr gut__..._ It will be best to begin as quickly as possible, I think." She kept talking as she gathered the pile together, then began unpinning other sheets from the wall. "There are some things I must retrieve from my laboratory. We will go there together."

"And?" said Jack, rising from his seat as well. "Then what? Are you going to start giving me some answers?"

She had been carefully packing away her papers into a neat leather satchel, but his words gave her pause.

"We will discuss this on the way."

Jack supposed it was the best answer he was going to get for now. In the time it took him to reach that supposition, however, an explosively loud noise sounded off from somewhere beyond the walls of Tenenbaum's apartment.

Tenenbaum froze. "What was that?"

Jack froze as well, though less with surprise and more because the sounds that came immediately after—echoing screams, whooping cries, and the words _"Atlas lives!"_ carrying up through the walls and heights of Mercury Suites—forced the memory of what Diane had last said to him to finally come crashing down upon him with all its might.

"Oh, no."

He wasn't consciously aware of the expression that came over his face, but whatever it was, it was sufficient to cause Tenenbaum to adopt her own look of alarm.

She slung the satchel over her shoulder and immediately began to rummage through the side table's drawers. "You still have your weapon?" she said to Jack without looking at him, instead keeping her attention focused on the pistol she'd just retrieved.

"Uh—" It was difficult to shake himself back to full attention when the specter of what a massively stupid thing he had just done hung over him like a stubbornly heavy cloud, but he managed it in time to quickly pat himself down. "Yes— Yes, I've got it."

"Then we are fortunate that you chose today to practice your marksmanship, _ja?_" She nodded in the direction of the front door. "If those are truly men of Atlas out there, then it won't be long until—"

At that moment, as if on cue, someone rammed into the door from the outside. Every muscle in Jack's body tensed at the sound, and he reached for his gun without fully being aware of it. If they were really Atlas's men—he was a friend of Atlas, he'd given him aid, so would they stop when they recognized him? But Jack knew that would be impossible almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind. Atlas had barely been able to call off his splicer guards; what power would he have to call off an entire mob?

The door was rammed again, and this time it nearly buckled from the force. Jack took a wary step back, hand tightening on the grip of his pistol. Killing a man with his bare hands had been so easy, so natural, despite how sick it still made him. Would killing a man with a gun be all too different?

"This way!" called Tenenbaum, having already made for the stairs to the upper floor. "Those idiots won't spend all day trying to break it down—we'll go the other way!"

Jack could barely think to respond as he ran after her. Not that he was given much time for a response, as the ramming finally ceased just before he followed Tenenbaum up the stairs, and another explosion sounded from somewhere below.


	16. Firefight

**JUNE 8, 1959 ****— 5:35 PM**

When Jack and Tenenbaum emerged from her apartment onto the uppermost balcony, the sight that greeted them was Mercury Suites in flames.

One of the explosions Jack had heard earlier seemed to have gone off at the base of the square's central stairwell. Black smoke rose through the elevator shaft it wrapped around, while the metal gates and spokes of the elevator itself sat in a gnarled and twisted heap amid a mess of rubble and broken tile. Fire raged through an open door on one of the floors below. A group of men—splicers, perhaps, but Jack could only guess—forced their way into another, cutting through the metal door with a blowtorch and ramrod, and a chorus of screams rang out under a hail of gunfire. There were others, too many to count, innocents and armed men alike, inevitably meeting one another in the Suites' narrow routes and coming to invariable ends.

The sight of it all was dizzying, so dizzying that Jack very nearly forgot he needed to be making an escape. Thankfully, Tenenbaum was quick to remind him of that.

"Move!"

He snapped back to attention to see a pair of men making their way across the gangway that connected the balcony to the center stairwell. One of them shouted to the other, then raised his gun to aim at Jack. But before Jack was consciously aware of it, his own gun was raised in time to shoot the man down.

A moving target, he quickly learned, was a far different beast than the paper silhouettes he'd cut down earlier that day. Jack couldn't tell whether he'd made a direct hit, but whatever he'd done, it was enough to send the target reeling and screaming over the edge of the gangway. The other man shouted, though by now his words were more than incomprehensible in Jack's ears, and leveled his weapon in Jack's direction.

Two shots this time, and the man went down with a cry. Jack didn't see where his bullets had ended up. He didn't want to look.

"Hurry, Jack!" Tenenbaum's voice cut through the haze of his mind like a bolt from the blue, even though she'd been at his side the entire time. "Who knows how many more bombs they're sitting on?"

He didn't want to think about it. So he did as he was told, and hurried on instead.

Smoke continued to billow out through the grates of the elevator shaft, in addition to where the stairwell itself had caught fire, but there was no other way down. It stung his eyes and burned his throat, to say nothing of the heat of the fire itself, but there was no other choice. Jack shielded his face with one hand and kept a tight grip on his gun with the other, and through the flames he went.

"Jack, wait!"

He was just about to descend the second set of stairs, floorboards creaking and bending beneath his heavy steps, when he heard Tenenbaum shout again. The fire and the force of the explosion must have weakened the walkway's structure; by the time he turned back, it had already begun to give way, and Tenenbaum had already begun to fall away.

Only by lunging forward at the last possible moment did Jack manage to catch her, but he could only grab her by the arm before the floor fell out entirely. She clutched at him with both arms in an attempt to pull herself up, but it was no use. He hung with her at the edge of the stairs, trying desperately to keep her from slipping out of his grip.

"_Scheisse_—" To her credit, despite the gravity of the situation, Tenenbaum managed not to sound too panicked. "Jack, pull me up!"

It was a struggle just to hold onto her as she was, which was nearly enough to make Jack panic. "I can't," he stammered out, "I don't think I can—"

"Of course you can do it, Jack! We built you with the strength of ten oxen, now _pull me up already!_"

_We built you_—those words reminded Jack of just how much he stood to lose with her death. Were his state of mind any clearer, they would have reminded him also of what Tenenbaum had said about those many things that were being kept from him. But that wasn't the sort of thought he was capable of thinking at a time as harrowing as this.

He ground his teeth together and pulled. It was an even greater struggle than before, but somehow he managed to pull her up, enough so that she could elbow her way onto the ledge and drag herself the rest of the way. Once she was safely up, she slumped against him for but a moment, close enough for Jack to feel her panic betrayed in the quickness of her pulse and breath.

Then she tensed, drew her gun out of her satchel with alarming speed, and swung her arm past Jack's shoulder to fire off three shots behind him. When Jack turned to look, another pair of shabbily-dressed men lay slumped on the stairs.

Tenenbaum kept a hand on Jack's steady arm as she shakily got to her feet. "We must hurry."

Jack only nodded and stood as well, carefully stepping past their fallen assailants before taking off with greater speed than before. Tenenbaum followed close behind.

More screams echoed from somewhere above them as they finally reached the ground floor. It was all Jack could do to keep from looking back.

A hail of gunfire stopped them as they reached the tram station; Jack, tugging Tenenbaum down with him, barely managed to duck behind the platform in time. A group of Atlas's men had managed to overturn a tram car in the middle of the railway and were hiding inside it for cover, firing at them with tommy guns all the while.

Jack peeked out from over the platform just long enough to try taking them down, but with three shots he was spent and had nothing to show for it. He swore as he ducked back under cover, while more bullets flew overhead.

"Give me your gun," Tenenbaum said sharply, then took it from his shaking grip when he didn't hand it over fast enough. She retrieved more rounds from her satchel and began to reload it for him.

"I can't..." Blood was pounding in his ears; only a sharp pain in his shoulder and the cacophonous _ratatat_ of the gunfire that surrounded them cut through the roar of his own heartbeat. He had to shake his head to clear it enough for him to speak. "I can't shoot them out. There's too many of them."

"Then _think_, Jack." Tenenbaum glared at him as she pressed the gun back into his hand. "This is what you were built to do. You can do this, I know you can."

Jack didn't know what she meant by that. He couldn't possibly fathom what she truly meant by that. But he knew that if either of them had any hope of making it out of this situation alive, he would have to believe in whatever she said.

He thought. He thought as hard as he possibly could. The roof of the tram car shielded the group of men from any gunfire, and the way they had turned it across the tracks left it impossible for anyone to cross—unless they tried to make a break for it across the median, or down the other lane, but the car's open windows and wide views would leave them just as vulnerable as if they were to try a frontal assault.

Across the tracks...

An idea occurred in Jack's mind—a foolish idea, an incredibly stupid idea, but it was the only possible solution that would come to him. Besides, he reasoned, he'd done a number of incredibly stupid things over the past few days, and he'd yet to die from any of them so far, so what was one more?

He fired a single shot at the tram car, enough to force them under cover again, then darted out from behind the platform and down the stairs to the tracks.

"Jack, what are you doing?!"

Tenenbaum's words were lost to him amid the haze of fear and adrenaline that propelled him forward. He shot at the car again when he spied a head peeking out from one of the windows, again and again and again, until he reached the raised track itself and was able to wrap his free hand around it.

Once again, it felt so easy, so natural: blue bolts of electricity sparked out from his fingertips and arced down the length of the metal track, up through the point of contact, and all throughout the tram car itself. Keeping the electricity going was no difficult task at first, though the longer he kept at it the more dizzying it felt, the lighter his head seemed to be...

"Jack!"

He realized with a start that screams were coming from within the tram car ahead. He hadn't been fully aware at the start of this quickly-cobbled plan whether or not it would actually work, but now it seemed as though it had.

"Come on!"

He released his grip on the track with a shaking hand, staggered to his feet, and followed Tenenbaum as she ran down the other lane.

* * *

By the time they reached the Bistro Square, it seemed as though Atlas's men had already beaten them there.

Perhaps they had already been there the entire time, or perhaps they had come here first before making their assault on Mercury Suites, but regardless, the scene Jack and Tenenbaum found was the remnants of what looked like some great battle: the Bistro in flames, parts of the square reduced entirely to rubble, and bloodied bodies lying in the street.

Atlas had told Jack there would be a war coming. He had warned him of this. But he could never have imagined it would be coming so soon.

The pounding in his head was starting up again. He quickly shook it in an attempt to make it stop. The Metro station wasn't far from here, he told himself. Just another short distance, and then...

Another explosion sounded from the direction of the station, and more echoing screams soon followed. Jack didn't know if he'd ever felt his hopes dashed so swiftly and so surely.

Now what? His own apartment was only a short distance away, as well—but if Atlas's forces had been so eager to pillage Mercury Suites, there was nothing stopping them from doing the same at Athena's Glory. There was no refuge to be found here; they had to escape. But the bathysphere station...

"There's a bathysphere station down in Apollo Square," he said shakily, looking down the path to the bulkhead. "We'll have to... It's the only way out—"

"What are you thinking, Jack?" snapped Tenenbaum. "Where do you think these men came from? Do you really think we can make it through there alive?"

"What else are we supposed to do?!" Jack couldn't keep the panic from his tone; he could hardly even think to try. "Either we're gunned down at the station here, and who knows if there's even anything _left_ down there, or we try to sneak through Apollo Square, and the only other option we've got is to wait here for them to find us—"

"_Nein_," she said sharply, holding up a hand to stop him. "There is another way. We must go to the sewers."

Jack only nodded in reply. He had no idea what could be waiting for them in the sewers—a way to the emergency access tunnels, perhaps, but if that was the case, then wouldn't Atlas's forces already be there by now?—but once again, he had no choice but to trust in Tenenbaum.

The sewers were at the very end of the railway, in the opposite direction from whence they came. The tram cars sat empty and undisturbed at the station, and the only evidence that anything was amiss was the scent of smoke mingled with blood and gunpowder that wafted down the glass-paned tunnel. It seemed that Atlas's men hadn't ventured this far after all.

"Keep a lookout," hissed Tenenbaum once they reached the gate to the sewers. It could only be lifted through the turn of a crank, and though it took her some visible effort, she managed to get it going.

Jack kept watch just as she said, looking back down the tunnel and keeping a careful eye out for any approaching assailants. But none came. Only the echoes of shouts and flickering orange light came from the other end of the winding tunnel.

The rest of the city shimmered and swayed beyond the glass of the tunnel, lights all aglow, looking as though nothing had ever changed. Jack could only wonder whether the rest of the city was truly at peace, or if Atlas had already reached them as well.

_Atlas._ Jack had thought he'd been given a chance to find a solution to their struggles without any bloodshed. He'd thought he could manage it. But the span of a week was hardly any chance at all, was it? Something like this required no small amount of coordination—had this been Atlas's plan the entire time? Why had he even bothered to attempt making peace with the son of Andrew Ryan if he was going to carry out an assault like this anyway?

"Got it." The gate was up, at least far enough for Tenenbaum to duck under and through. "Come, Jack."

He followed after her without a word. The stench of the sewers was almost a welcome reprieve from the smoke-filled streets they'd just left behind.

"You close the gate," she said, pointing to the crank on their side of the wall. "I will go on ahead. Follow me once you are finished."

Jack watched after her just long enough to determine which direction she was headed—not that there were many directions for them to go down here—then set to turning the crank.

He remembered the money he had given Atlas just days before. He wondered how much of that had gone to funding their supplies.

He wondered how much of the innocents' blood was on his hands.

The gate made a loud _clang_ as it finally shut, reverberating into the floor and up through his bones. Jack had to shake himself before he remembered what he was supposed to do next.

Tenenbaum was nowhere to be found, but at the end of the corridor where she had gone was a set of stairs leading down to a large door; it appeared to lead to some maintenance storeroom. The door opened at his approach, and Tenenbaum stood inside.

"Quickly," she called to him, reaching for him to usher him through the door. Jack didn't need to be told twice.

The interior was dimly lit, and it looked no less like a maintenance room on the inside than it did on the outside. At least that was what Jack thought until he ventured further inside and noticed the toys that littered the floor.

"What is this place?" His voice was quiet, and not without trepidation.

"This is my safehouse," she said simply, walking past Jack to peer down the stairs. "A sanctuary for the girls, away from your father's eyes..."

Despite that, however, there appeared to be no one present aside from the two of them.

"Crafty little ones." Tenenbaum shook her head. "Their instincts remain strong. They must have escaped through the vents once they heard what was going on."

Jack tensed once he considered the implications of what she'd just said. If those girls were the reason they'd come all this way...

"Where would they have gone?" he said tentatively, squeezing the grip of his gun. "If we have to go find them, how—how are we going to—"

"Leave that to me." Somehow the calm of Tenenbaum's voice cut through his rising alarm. "I know where to find them. But first we should tend to your wounds."

"Wounds?" Only then did it occur to Jack that some part of him was in pain. There was a sharp, burning sensation in his shoulder, one he'd felt earlier, but it hadn't been enough to stop him at the time; it didn't feel enough to stop him even now. "No—no, I'm fine."

Tenenbaum gave him one of the most unimpressed looks he had ever seen in his life. Then she crossed the room to where he stood, ripped apart the already-torn fabric at his shoulder, and pressed her thumb to the spot.

The pain that followed was immediate and intense, shooting down the entire length of Jack's arm and blooming across the span of his chest. It was enough to make the gun fall from his grip.

"You are resistant to pain," Tenenbaum said quietly, probing the spot with focused intent. "Perhaps too much for your own good. I have enough ADAM to fix what damage has been done, but first I will need to extract the bullet."

Even if it weren't for the intense pain emanating from his wound—a bullet wound, apparently, and Jack wondered just how resistant to pain he had to be to have missed something that grave—the mention of ADAM would have been enough to make his stomach turn.

"No," he said shakily, gripping one of Tenenbaum's wrists with his other arm. "No—no ADAM. Please."

"You will be fine," she said in reply, as calm as ever. "It does not affect you like it does the others. Come, there is no time to argue."

She carefully, gently took him by his uninjured arm and led him down the stairs. It was strange to Jack, the thought of Tenenbaum ever being _gentle_, but he went without protest, feeling no different than a child being led by the hand.

The floor below was home to an arrangement of cots beyond a knee-high gate, more toys strewn about, and a wide-windowed office through another set of doors. Chalk drawings decorated the stone floor, depicting in childlike proportions an assortment of sea life and the hulking figures of Big Daddies. It was into the office that Tenenbaum led him, then sat him down on the cot inside before she began to rummage through the desk opposite him.

Jack stared through the window. His head felt like it was in a fog.

"_Verdammt._" He couldn't see Tenenbaum's face, but he could hear the frown in her voice. "I have no anesthetic."

"It's fine." Jack's stomach turned again, but he knew he had no choice. "Just do it."

Tenenbaum didn't bother asking him if he was sure. She only gathered her tools, pulled up a chair, tugged aside the fabric of his shirt, and got to work.

Despite his supposed resistance to pain, the sight of his own blood was dizzying, and the sensation of her digging around inside his shoulder wasn't an easy one to bear. He wondered how much worse it would be if his resistance wasn't supposedly so high. He wondered why it was so high in the first place.

He wondered...

"Why..." Jack's voice was a croak, but Tenenbaum was more than close enough to hear him. "Why did you say those things?"

"What things?"

He couldn't tell if she honestly couldn't remember or if she was too focused on digging out the bullet from his flesh to think about it. Either way...

"About the pain, about the ADAM, about—about everything, that..." His head and shoulder throbbed in time with each other as he struggled to recall her exact words. "That I was _built_ for this—what did you mean?"

Tenenbaum's hands paused, and her lips pressed together. "I suppose," she said slowly, carefully, "since you did keep me alive back there...I do owe you some answers, after all."

Jack wouldn't have thought to put it like that. But he was hardly in any position to protest.

Finally the bullet came free. Tenenbaum dropped it into a metal dish beside him on the cot, and kept her focus on his wound when she spoke again.

"When your creation was ordered of us, Suchong and I..." Her lips pursed again, only for a moment, but this time the expression was accompanied by a knit in her brow. "Our orders were not to create an heir for Andrew Ryan. It was to build a weapon."

Jack's heart pounded. He didn't understand.

"A weapon?"

She nodded as she gathered up her tools again, leaving Jack's side to deposit them in a nearby sink. "Yes... A weapon built from Andrew Ryan's flesh and blood."

He didn't understand. He didn't understand at all.

"But my father..."

His hands shook. He could feel the whole world crumbling away beneath his feet.

"How did he..."

Did he know this would happen? Did he somehow know that someone like Atlas would try to start a war in his city? But no, if that was true—if what Tenenbaum was telling him was really true, then that would mean...

It couldn't be true, could it?

How could that possibly align with what his father had told him?

"Everything he told me—everything about _becoming my own man_, and _earning his name_, and _bearing his legacy_..." He clutched at the edge of the cot with his free hand, feeling as though he might fall from it if he didn't hang on with all his might. "Were those all just lies? Was he just—was he just trying to keep me in line, or what? Was he _lying_ to me when he said I could become a man of worth?"

"No, Jack."

Tenenbaum's voice was suddenly firm as she sat in front of Jack again, syringe in hand, and there was a ferocity in her eyes that he hadn't seen before. It was too great a ferocity for him to hold her gaze.

"Your father is cruel in some ways—many ways, perhaps—and at times, many times, I cannot understand the way he thinks or what he intends. But if he said this to you, I would not for even a second doubt that he truly meant it."

Jack had nothing to say to that. Words felt entirely beyond him at the moment.

Tenenbaum took the syringe in her hand, filled with murky green ADAM, and injected it into his shoulder. He flinched as he felt the raw ADAM flood his system, as his injured muscle and flesh twisted and regenerated and made itself whole.

"Jack."

She set the syringe aside and gently touched her hand to the underside of Jack's chin, lifting his head to meet her gaze again.

"If you do not believe in your father, then believe in me." Her hand rose to softly stroke his hair. "You were born to do great things, child—no matter what the circumstances of your birth may have been. If you can believe in nothing else, believe in this."

He wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe it more than anything else in the world entire. But he didn't know if he could.

He sank forward into Tenenbaum's arms, willed himself to believe it, willed himself not to be broken by it, and held onto her tightly enough to keep the rest of the world from falling away.


	17. Pheromones

**JUNE 8, 1959 ****— 11:19 PM**

It was late in the evening hours before Officer Sullivan was finally ready to report to Andrew Ryan. It had been much earlier that Ryan was ready to receive him in Central Control, but such was the way of things.

"What are the total casualties?"

Sullivan looked uneasy. Considering the day's events, Ryan expected nothing different.

"We're still working on the tallies, sir." He glanced down at a scratch pad as he spoke; there had been no time to prepare a formal report. "Good news is that so far it looks like the hostility's been limited to Olympus Heights."

In the grand scheme of where _good news_ was concerned, it really wasn't all that good.

"I want the entirety of Apollo Square placed under lockdown." There was nothing in this world that could have matched the ice and steel in Andrew Ryan's voice at that moment. "Not a single rat is to leave the premises until Atlas and every single one of his parasites are exterminated, you hear me?"

"Understood, sir. We've already shut down bathysphere service to and from the Square, and we've got guards stationed at the bulkhead doors."

It wasn't enough, not in Ryan's mind. There couldn't possibly have been enough to quell the rage that simmered within him.

"Show me the damage."

Sullivan hesitated, but he knew better than to cross Ryan at a time like this. He reached into the folder at his side and drew out what photographs they'd already taken of the scene, then carefully slid them across Ryan's desk.

The rush development job had done a number on the quality of the photos, leaving them grainy and lacking in color, but they were enough to clearly show the extent of the damage. The Bistro Square lay in ruins; the Metro station had been entirely destroyed, strewn with the bodies of those attempting a last-minute escape; Athena's Glory had been looted from top to bottom; but worst of all was the remnants of what had occurred at Mercury Suites.

"Did your recovery efforts turn up any survivors?"

Sullivan's hands knotted where they gripped his officer's cap.

"Those that survived were the ones who managed to get out ahead of the worst of it. The rest were either caught in the explosions or...or by the people who set 'em off."

Ryan sifted through the photos as he spoke, searching for details he wasn't yet prepared to acknowledge.

"How were they able to plant explosives in the area?"

"We're looking into that right now. Got some of our patrols from the area in questioning as we speak."

What remained unsaid—the implication that Atlas's propaganda had somehow managed to infiltrate even his security forces, those held to the highest standard of upholding Rapture's values—hung in the air between them like a great invisible weight.

Ryan stared down at the wreckage of Athena's Glory. The question that sat at the forefront of his mind was one that needed an immediate, definitive answer. But his pride prevented him from asking it with any urgency.

"Is there any news regarding my son?"

"Not yet, sir. His apartment was trashed like all the rest, but it doesn't look like anything else went on in there."

The probability was high that Jack had been nowhere near Olympus Heights at the time of the incident; he'd heard some news already that the boy was last seen at the shooting range, after all. But the possibility existed that he had knowingly avoided the attack. The possibility existed that he was somehow complicit in the whole thing.

His time at the shooting range certainly did nothing to disprove either scenario.

Ryan's grip tightened on the photo in his hand.

"He must be found as soon as possible."

Sullivan looked uneasy, even more so than before. But again, he knew better than to voice any argument.

"I'll tell the boys soon as I get back."

Ryan would have preferred him to do so sooner than that. But before he could instruct Sullivan accordingly, his attention fell to the next photo in the stack.

It depicted the scene on the ground floor at Mercury Suites, where the elevator shaft had been destroyed, apartment doors had been cut open and bodies lay in the street.

One of the opened apartments was that of Yi Suchong.

An alarm bell was ringing somewhere in the back of Andrew Ryan's mind.

"Where is Dr. Suchong?"

"There's been no sign of him, either. Maybe they got to him in his apartment, but—"

"You haven't searched the premises?"

"Not yet, sir—"

"Radio your men right now, tell them to drop whatever they're doing and search Yi Suchong's quarters immediately." This deserved urgency. "Do it."

Again, despite the doubt in Sullivan's face, he could offer no protest. He got out his radio and did as Ryan ordered.

The minutes that followed were some of the tensest Ryan had ever known.

"_Still no sign of Suchong_," came a voice crackling through Sullivan's radio. "_But those bombers really did a number on this place._"

"Tell them to search the laboratory."

"The laboratory?" But a single look from Ryan reminded Sullivan not to question him. He brought up the radio again: "He's got a lab. Try looking there."

More minutes passed. Then:

"_There's nothing here._"

The alarm bell's ring grew louder and louder.

It seemed that even Sullivan could hear it. "What do you mean, _nothing?_"

"_The place is a wreck, but it looks like whoever got in here took everything that wasn't nailed down._"

The photo crumpled in Ryan's hand.

"Tell your men to conduct a search for Yi Suchong at once. Leave no stone unturned."

"Mr. Ryan—"

"_Wait!_" The radio crackled again, immediately commanding their attention. "_Johnson found something, sir._"

Ryan couldn't dare to hope; several drums full of liquid pheromones couldn't be so easily missed, after all. But part of him did, regardless of however much he knew better.

"_It looks like__...__it's an AccuVox, sir. There's something in it__..._"

AccuVox—Fontaine Futuristics' name brand of personal audio recorders. Ryan's mood was already such that even the remotest connection to Fontaine was enough to make his blood boil.

"_Sir—the label on the cassette here, it says__...__ 'To A. Ryan from T. Telamon.'_"

But at that, his blood ran cold.

Sullivan stared at Ryan with obvious trepidation. Ryan took a deep, fuming breath, then nodded to him.

"Play it for me."

There was another long moment of tension, but Sullivan nodded in reply. "Play it, Patrick." And then he set the radio on the desk between them.

The audio on the cassette was somewhat difficult to make out through the doubled layer of static, but Ryan's focus was on nothing else.

"_Top of the evenin' to you, Mr. Ryan. This would be Atlas speaking."_

There was an Irish lilt in the voice, and a tone that sounded almost like laughter. The voice was new to his ears, but there was something distantly familiar in that tone, something that immediately grated on Ryan's nerves.

"_I imagine by the time you find this message, one way or another, you'll have guessed what it was we're after. Lucky for us that Dr. Suchong was the sort to work for the highest bidder__...__but, ah, it seems he did need some more convincing in the end. Not so lucky for you, of course; no matter how or when you've managed to come by this little tape, after all, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do to stop us now."_

Ryan had, once again, started to drum his fingers against the desk without fully realizing it. At this, however, he stopped cold.

"_I might have tried more peaceful discourse, but you've shown us time and time again that our voices aren't important, as if they're not loud enough to fall upon your ears. Well, is this loud enough for you?"_

There was a slow, rolling laugh, and then a deep sigh.

"_Your son, though, wee Jack__...__now there's a lad with a good head on his shoulders. Why, you should have seen the fire in his eyes when he talked about changing this city for the better! But I think you and I both know that talk isn't exactly his strongest suit. You and I both know he was born for better things."_

At once, Ryan remembered the theft from Fontaine Futuristics. He remembered the documents that had turned up missing, and as he remembered it, the sound of that alarm grew to drown out all else but the heavily-staticked strains of the voice on the tape.

"_So now you've got the big picture, don't you? I've found the aces up your sleeve, and now I've got them up mine. You'd do best not to stop us, Mr. Ryan, because all it'll take is...how'd that go again, doctor?"_

There was a heavy, wet noise, a pained cry, and a voice that sounded unbearably like Suchong's:

"_Rapture__...__ Rapture is glory__...__"_

"_Ah, that's right."_ Atlas laughed again. _"Three little words__...__ That's all it'll take to bring you crashing down, Mr. Ryan—and you know bloody well which three words I mean, don't you?"_

A long silence followed, before Sullivan's man Patrick spoke again:

"_Sir__...__ That's the end of the reel._"

Ryan slowly leaned back in his chair, raised one hand to his chin, and gripped the armrest with the other. He didn't look at Sullivan; his rage was too strong to chance eye contact at the moment.

"Mr. Ryan, sir..." The gravity of the situation was clearly not lost on Sullivan, but the sheer depth of that gravity could not possibly be within his realm of understanding. "If you don't mind my asking, just what—"

"I do mind," snapped Ryan, his voice both sharp and quiet. "Your orders haven't changed, Sullivan. Dr. Suchong, wherever they're keeping him, must be found at once."

"Now hold on just a minute, Mr. Ryan," said Sullivan, leaning forward in his seat with unexpected fortitude. "You want us to find your son, fine, but you still want us to find Suchong too? From the sounds of that tape—I mean, who knows how long ago Atlas recorded it, but it sure as hell don't sound like Suchong's going to be alive and kicking by the time we _do_ find him. And besides that—look, Mr. Ryan, I hate to be so frank with you, but we just don't have the resources to keep a tight watch on Apollo Square _and_ protect the rest of the city _and_ organize search parties for two different people. It'll have to be one or the other."

If Ryan stopped to consider it rationally, he might have agreed with, or at least understood Sullivan's side of things. But the size and weight of his fury made it remarkably difficult to consider anyone's logic but his own.

Before he could properly lay into Sullivan for his audacity, however, another voice—not Patrick, and certainly not Atlas—came crackling through the radio.

"_Officer Sullivan, sir, we need backup, we need backup now— Oh, God—_"

Sullivan snatched back the radio at once. "Sullivan here, what's your location?"

"_I was patrolling the grounds in Arcadia, and then—and then it sounded like a bomb went off— Jesus Christ, they're everywhere—_"

Before the patrolling officer could say anything more, a sharp popping noise cut him off. From the cries that followed, it seemed he had been interrupted by a hail of gunfire.

Sullivan looked up at Ryan, who met his gaze this time. Ryan's hands shook, and his face was livid with fury.

"Find my son."

* * *

**JUNE 9, 1959 — 7:07 AM**

Jack had no idea how long he and Tenenbaum had hidden away in her safehouse. Tenenbaum had insisted on making certain that he was fully recovered before they set off on the plan they'd devised, but Jack didn't feel much like he'd recovered at all.

Tenenbaum had made her escape with him through the emergency access tunnels, navigating them as easily as if she'd done it a hundred times before. Perhaps she had. It wasn't something Jack had the presence of mind to think or ask, not at the time.

At the very bottom of Neptune's Bounty, Tenenbaum had explained, deep below the docks, there was a secret chasm which Fontaine and his smugglers had used to sneak in and out of the city years ago. It was still there, she was certain, as was the submarine they had used to transport their goods. It was in this submarine that she and her girls could safely make their escape to the surface—but with the chaos that Atlas was now causing, and with the girls now scattered across the city, someone had to secure the sub in her stead while she gathered them again.

"_Go through the transit hub_," she had told him before setting off on her own way. "_There you will find passage to Neptune's Bounty. The path to the hideout is below Fontaine Fisheries; you may have to break down the door, but I know you can do this. Call me on the radio once you have found the submarine, and I will be with you as quickly as possible._"

And so she sent him off, equipped with one of a pair of radios, armed with a newly-loaded pistol hidden beneath his coat, and with his veins full of EVE. All in all, he should have been more than ready to carry out his mission.

But he didn't feel ready. He hardly felt ready at all. He hardly even felt like a human being.

What more would it take for him to feel human again?

He didn't know. He didn't know if it was something he wanted to consider.

It was early yet, about the right time that the transit hub should have been bustling with people, workers heading to and fro between the bathysphere station and the shops that surrounded it, to the routes between the Medical Pavilion and Neptune's Bounty. But the bathyspheres sat still in their bays. The people left in the streets were wary and confused, seeking answers in the few shops that opened their shutters and doors, at the newsstands that had yet to receive their daily editions. A sickly smell hung in the corridors and at every vent, as though the smoke-filled air of Olympus Heights had cycled all the way through Arcadia and dispersed throughout the rest of the city without losing its scent, as though burdened by the memory of what had happened just the day prior.

Some great chaos had occurred in the night while Jack was hiding away from the world, something too great for him to presently fathom. But it seemed the rest of the world had no greater grasp on it than he.

It wasn't something for him to dwell upon now, however. He had given his word to Tenenbaum that he would give her his aid, and he intended to follow through on it. Only after she was safely gone from the city could he take the time to sort through the mess Atlas had just made.

Jack made his way down the grand staircase at the end of the hub, past the shoeshine stands and in the direction of the bulkhead to Neptune's Bounty. A school of fish flickered past the glass-paned ceiling, casting shadows in the lights of the city above.

As he passed through the center of the street, however, a loud, squealing whine echoed through the PA speakers overhead. It was enough to stop him in his tracks, and it was enough to catch the attention of all the others in the square.

"_Good morning, Rapture."_

If the noise of the speakers hadn't been enough to stop Jack cold, the sound of Atlas's voice certainly would have done the trick.

"_Are you prepared for the dawn of a new day?"_

It was enough to stop those around him, as well. Some murmured amongst themselves, voices tinged with confusion, while others pointed up to the speakers with questioning cries.

"_By now, I suspect most of you have learned of the bloodshed at Olympus Heights. But did you know those lives could have been saved? Did you know those men and their families might not have been killed, if not for the pride and tyranny of Andrew Ryan?"_

Jack could only wonder: why hadn't Atlas given him more of a chance?

"_We will not stop until our voices are heard. We will not stop until this nightmare of Ryan's is put to an end. This city will rise on new foundations, and we, who were nothing, shall be all!"_

His stomach twisted at the thought of what he could have done differently, what he might have done to prevent all this from happening.

"_Now rejoice, ye oppressed of the earth, for this is your chance to join our struggle. Raise up your arms, my brethren, and remember—Rapture is glory."_

All at once, the commotion around him came to a halt. The people in the streets were still, and they stared up at the speakers as if in a trance.

"_Rapture is glory, and through the blood of the tyrants and the sweat of our brow—by God, that glory shall be ours!"_

Those words filled Jack with dread, as did the eerie scene that surrounded him. It was difficult to pin down what unsettled him so deeply, but the stillness of the people around him seemed unnatural.

"_As for your first task, my brothers__...__ Five hundred ADAM to the first man or woman who brings me the son of Andrew Ryan—alive."_

Perhaps Jack's dread had come to him a little too soon.

The people in the square seemed to come back to their senses, but one by one, their attention fell solely upon him. His scarf had been left behind hours ago; he had no way of hiding his face now.

As they began to approach him, Jack reached for the gun in his coat and started to back away...but there was nowhere for him to escape to, not with this many people in his path. The route to Neptune's Bounty had seemed so short just minutes before, but now the distance between him and the bulkhead seemed insurmountable.

A woman lunged at him, and it was all he could do to duck out of the way, gun outstretched. Before he could raise it to shoot, he sensed someone coming up from his rear—and by the time he turned back, he was too late to defend himself. Someone struck his head from behind, hard enough to make his vision go starry and spotted with darkness, hard enough to knock him to the ground and send the gun flying from his hand. There was a body on top of him before he could reach for it again, a foot on his hand and an elbow at the back of his neck, all pinning him to the ground. Another strike came, then another, and by the time something was slipped over his head and knotted at his throat, everything had already faded to black.


	18. Ultimatum

**JUNE 9, 1959 ****— 6:39 PM**

When Jack came to, it was with the scent of smoke in his nostrils and the feeling of a grated floor pressing into his face.

His head pounded, and the pain from earlier didn't seem to have lessened at all in the time he'd been unconscious; his vision, though no longer dark and starry, was little more than a blurred orange haze. He could vaguely pick out some voices speaking somewhere above him, but the exact words were difficult to make out through the thick fog that still clouded his senses.

". . . alive, goddamnit, not bloody beaten to a pulp!"

Was that Atlas?

The concentration it took him to be sure of that conclusion only made the throbbing in Jack's head intensify. The pain made him groan as he began the unexpectedly laborious process of moving his limbs.

"You shoulda specified—look, see, he's fine, he's waking up!"

"And you're a lucky son of a bitch that he is. Go on, get out of here."

The grating cut into his palms as Jack struggled to push himself upright. The lighting in the room, wherever he was, stung his eyes and caused his headache to spike. He rubbed a hand over his face to try to alleviate some of the pain, even if only by a small amount, but no amount of pressure seemed to help.

"Are you all right there, boyo?"

It took Jack a moment to realize that a hand had been extended in his direction. He took it, though not without some trepidation, and Atlas helped pull him up to his feet.

_Atlas._ There was no question of it now.

"You have my apologies, Jack." Atlas cast his eyes downward as he shook his head. "Bloody idiots, the lot of them... Never thought they'd go that far just to bring you in."

Though his mind was still in a fog, Jack tried to back away—until his back came up against a rail, stopping him short. He twisted around, realized he and Atlas were suspended on a catwalk, then saw the massive machinery that pumped away mere feet from where they stood, rising through the center of the circular, red-tinged corridor like a particularly gruesome bouquet.

They were in Hephaestus. But they weren't just in Hephaestus; they were at Hephaestus's center of geothermal control, the very heart of Rapture and all the power that flowed throughout it.

The thought of what Atlas could be intending to do in such a place made Jack's head spin. It was very nearly enough to send him reeling over the railing.

"Easy, there." But Atlas's steady hand on his shoulder put a stop to that. "Come on, this is no place for us to talk."

Every instinct in Jack's body urged him to do something different: to run away, to confront Atlas, to ask him what the hell was going on, to throw him over the rail and put a stop to all this. Ultimately, however, he could do little more than nod and allow Atlas to lead him down the catwalk, with that firm hand on his shoulder all the while.

They passed others on the way down, some who merely nodded to Atlas as they passed, and others who looked too busy and too determined to manage even that. It seemed each one had been set to a task, though towards what purpose, Jack had no idea. It wasn't something he wanted to consider.

Eventually they reached a set of enclosed rooms—the workshops, as Jack vaguely recalled from what he had last seen of this place. He remembered there had been people busily at work when he was last here; by the scattered supplies and suspiciously dark stains that spattered the floor, he supposed people had still been at work until some short time ago.

Atlas led him as far back as he could manage, until they reached an emptied office. With a deep sigh, he turned to face Jack and leaned back against a desk, half sitting on its edge and half not.

"This is one hell of a mess for you to be gettin' mixed up in, lad."

Were he of any clearer mind, Jack might have had some kind of retort to that. As things were, however, he was still too shaken and still in far too much pain to do anything other than swallow his nerves and continue trying to gather himself.

Atlas folded his arms over his chest, then looked up to Jack with something that might have been remorse.

"I wouldn't blame you if you can't, but... Believe me when I say that I didn't mean for things to go this far."

Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?

Jack was vaguely aware that the look on his face must have betrayed some amount of the deep confusion Atlas's words had sparked in his mind. That being the case, he supposed he had nothing to lose by voicing it as well.

"I was there," he said quietly, shakily, unsure if his voice could rise even if he tried. "I was at Mercury Suites...when your bombs went off."

One of Atlas's eyebrows quirked upwards just the slightest amount. "Doing what, exactly?"

"Does it matter?" Jack clenched his hand into a quaking fist. "People died—so many people died—they died because of _you_, and you're telling me that you _didn__'t mean_ for things to go this far?"

"Now, hold on." Atlas's brow furrowed. "Those people didn't die because of _me_, you understand? Their deaths weren't so meaningless as that. No, their deaths served the cause—a cause that's greater than you and I alone."

Jack had no idea what Atlas could have meant by that, and it frustrated him more than anything else.

"But that..." He pressed a hand to his head. "Atlas, I don't—I don't understand. Why did you even bother to meet with me that night? When you said that you believed in me, that I could be more than what my father meant for me..."

No matter how hard Jack pressed and pressed, his head still pounded. If Atlas had known what Tenenbaum had just revealed to him hours ago, what would he have said then? If Atlas had known he was never meant to be anything more than a weapon, would he still have said those things?

"If you really meant that, why did _this_ have to happen?!"

"I meant what I said that night, Jack. I still do."

Atlas's voice was quiet now, quiet enough to match Jack's own, but with a steely strength that Jack couldn't quite manage himself.

"The cause transformed them, Jack, and it gave their deaths more meaning than they could have ever achieved in their lives alone." He held Jack's gaze with a fiery stare as his hands dropped to either side, gripping the desk beneath him. "When I met with you that night, it was as a man; when we talked that night, and when we talked in my quarters some days later, it was as men. But this cause has transformed us as well, boyo. It's made us both more than men, whether we like it or not: I, the savior of the people, and you, the symbol of the oppressive oligarchy."

Jack barely knew what he meant by the word _oligarchy_, but he could guess well enough, and that guess was more than well enough to put a new twist in his gut.

"I told you that these people will cry for blood, and I meant it. They're crying for it even now...and the blood they're crying for is yours."

Somehow, Jack had begun to shake his head without fully realizing it.

"No..."

"But listen to me, Jack." Atlas took a step towards him. "It doesn't have to be like this. I meant what I said, and I still mean it now, because you have more power than the rest of us—more power than me, and more power than your father."

He didn't understand. But somehow Atlas's proximity kept him from feeling any power to give voice to his confusion.

"You have the power to transform yourself even further, Jack, into more than what these people see in you—into more than what your _father_ sees in you."

When Atlas put a hand at his shoulder again, Jack felt a glimmer of nerve, enough for him to speak again.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can become a man they'll want to look to and follow, rather than a man they'll want to tear down and destroy." He placed his other hand at Jack's other shoulder, and leaned in close. "As you stand now, Jack, you're Rapture's _golden boy_, a prince brought down to Rapture by the tyrant Ryan to rule the city in his stead. In the land of no gods or kings, the people simply won't stand for that. But if you were to act as their savior instead—if you, the prodigal son, were to bring them the head of Andrew Ryan... Why, that would make you a hero."

Jack wanted anything, anything but to look Atlas in the eye at that moment. But he could bring himself to do nothing else.

"I know what kind of man you can be, Jack. That's why I'd hate to see you cut down in spite of all your potential."

He didn't know if he could trust Atlas. He didn't know if he could believe in him. But if he couldn't believe in what Atlas was telling him, then what did he have left to believe in at all?

"Do you understand what I'm asking you to do?"

He did. He understood it clearly. But all he could do was nod in reply.

Atlas nodded as well, then stepped back and turned to reach for something on the desk.

"The way to Central Control is blocked by a bloody conga line of automated turrets, too many for the rest of us to get past... But I suspect Ryan will let you on through, once he sees for certain that his only son is alive and well."

When he turned back to face Jack again, it was to press a loaded gun into his hands.

"Now, be sure to take this with you...would you kindly?"

* * *

**JUNE 2, 1959 — 7:42 PM**

When Diane had heard the bounty for Jack Ryan issued some hours earlier, what few doubts she'd already had in Atlas's cause only multiplied in swarms.

She'd managed to force them down before then. When they were dealing with the prize they'd won from Olympus Heights, she'd forgotten every intent she ever had of questioning exactly what Atlas intended with Jack. When they'd taken Arcadia by force, there was no time to wonder what purpose the deaths of innocent bystanders and park strollers would serve them. But hearing the life of Jack Ryan set at the price of 500 ADAM was more than enough to bring her back to her senses, no matter how determined she'd once been to put all thought of him from her mind.

She hadn't waited any longer to ask him once Atlas was finished with his address. She wanted to know exactly what sort of business the two of them had with each other.

"_Never you mind that,"_ he'd told her with one of his disarming smiles. _"He'll be just fine, if that's what worries you. Remember your duty; I'll call for you when I need you again."_

Under other circumstances, those words might have been enough to assuage her. But she remembered the state she'd found Jack in that day, wandering in Apollo Square. She remembered what he'd told her: that Atlas had given him that plasmid, that Atlas had wanted to be his friend—that _Atlas_ was responsible.

She couldn't believe that Atlas truly intended for Jack to come out of this just fine, no matter what he intended for the rest of the city. She didn't know what to believe, but she knew she couldn't believe that.

Regardless, Diane couldn't think of any reasonable protest at the time. So she did as he said and returned to her task: standing guard over their hostage, the captured Dr. Yi Suchong.

The rope that bound his limbs to the hard wooden chair was all that kept him upright at this point; a cloth sack covered his head, just as it did when Atlas had been questioning him. Diane hadn't understood the nature of his interrogation, all _pheromones_ and _trigger phrases_ and other things that made no sense within any context she could think of. She'd thought to ask Atlas when all was said and done, but something told her that the less she knew concerning the intricacies of his operations, the better—or, at least, that Atlas felt as such. So it was in the interest of her own safety that she held her tongue.

It was in the same interest that she refrained from asking Atlas exactly why they continued to hold this man even after he'd gotten what he wanted, why they didn't just turn him loose or execute him once and for all. But now, that didn't seem quite enough.

It didn't seem right to her. Of course, her time in Rapture had long ago distorted all sense of _right_ and _wrong_ in her mind, but what remained of it in her gut told her this wasn't right. It unsettled her at the sight of the fallen in Olympus Heights and Arcadia; it unsettled her at the thought of even one more brutality committed in the name of bringing Rapture to a brighter tomorrow.

More than anything, however, it unsettled her at the thought of Jack Ryan being reduced to just another of Atlas's casualties.

That in itself unsettled her, considering how deeply the man had wounded her himself. But it was a feeling she couldn't shake, no matter how hard she tried.

She stared at Dr. Suchong's slumped figure, listened to his labored breathing, then stared down at the gun in her hand.

Could she do this?

Atlas had left her alone with the man some time ago, to deal with some business in Hephaestus. It would be some time yet before he returned, perhaps time enough for her to sneak Dr. Suchong out from here. But could she bring herself to betray Atlas's trust like that? Could she bring herself to betray the cause like that?

Was the cause worth upholding if it meant the deaths of any more innocents—if it meant the death of Jack Ryan?

Her grip tightened on her gun when she made her decision. She wanted to see Rapture restored to glory just as much as anyone else; she wanted peaceful days to return, for everyone to have a chance at happiness, for things to be even better than they were before, more than anything else in the entire world. But she didn't want to see any more bloodshed to make it happen.

Diane tucked her gun into her belt, then carefully stepped her way to the chair to start undoing the knots that held the doctor in place.

"What... What are you doing?"

She hadn't expected him to still be conscious, but that wasn't something she couldn't take in stride. "Stay quiet," she said after shushing him. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"What— Atlas's bandits suddenly taking mercy on me?"

Not only was he conscious, but he was somehow still able to scoff. Diane frowned, but continued to tug at the knots.

"Just be quiet."

"Give one good reason to believe I am not being taken to my execution."

Her frown deepened into a scowl. "Atlas isn't here."

He coughed out a laugh. "Atlas? Oh, please. Atlas may be one tough son of a bitch, but he is not so frightening. Atlas is nothing compared to—"

His words were cut short when Diane pulled the sack from his head. His face was still a pulpy mess from the interrogation he'd endured, but he managed to squint against the sudden light.

"Come on," she said brusquely, and tried to pull him to his feet.

"Get your hands off me!" he snapped in reply, and swatted her hands away. "I can stand perfectly fine—"

But as soon as he attempted to shift his weight to his feet, he stumbled forward instead and fell to the ground. Feeling more exasperated by the second, but still determined to see this through, Diane quickly knelt beside him to try once again.

"Dr. Suchong, please—"

At that moment, the door hissed and slid open. Atlas stood in the threshold.

Diane didn't know if she'd ever felt this kind of panic before in her life. She snapped to look at Suchong, her mind already fumbling for some manner of explanation, only to see that—despite what he'd said just seconds ago—his eyes were wide with fear.

"_You—_"

An explosion fired off barely feet away from Diane's ear, and a warm spatter covered her face. By the time the ringing in her ears ceased to overwhelm all her other senses, Suchong lay slumped on the floor, with what remained of his face turned upwards in a glassy, permanently shocked stare.

If her adrenaline hadn't been running so high, her insides might have turned themselves out at the sight. Instead she was left frozen on the floor, shaking as shock and panic and fear flooded her system and overloaded her senses, leaving her barely able to turn her head up to look at Atlas again.

Atlas lowered his gun, heaved a heavy sigh, and looked down with an expression that spoke of nothing but disappointment.

"Diane."

She couldn't bring herself to respond. Atlas sighed again, tucked away his gun, knelt beside her, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

"Would you mind explaining to me just what you were thinking?"

He started to wipe the blood from her face as he spoke, and put his other hand at her shoulder with a gentle grip. The cloth felt moist against her skin.

"I..."

How could she? What could she possibly say that wouldn't result in her brains being blown out as well?

"Shh, shh." He dabbed at the corners of her eyes; she hadn't realized she'd been teary, but it wouldn't have surprised her at this point. She felt lightheaded and dizzy with fear. "I'm not angry. Just tell me what happened."

"I..." Diane reached for his wrist, though her grasp was much weaker than his; somehow, she couldn't muster any more strength to hold onto him. "I just wanted... I didn't want anyone else to die."

"Oh, Diane." His face melted into a more sympathetic look. "That's terribly noble of you, admirably so. But this is war. We've no hope of making our dreams a reality if we're not willing to make sacrifices to get there."

"But..." She tried to shake her head, but the action only made her dizzier. "But I don't want... I don't want Jack to have to die."

"Jack?" His brow furrowed. "Is that what this is about?"

She'd tipped her hand without meaning to. What was happening to her?

Atlas clucked his tongue. "I'm terribly sorry, my dear... But where Jackie boy is concerned, I'm afraid you don't have any say."

In an instant, his gentle hand became a vise grip at the back of her neck as he pressed the handkerchief over her nose and mouth. Diane tried to scream, but no sound would come from her throat; she tried to claw at his arm, to get herself away, but her limbs were already too weak. Her vision began to fade, and in her last panicked moments of consciousness, she fully realized it wasn't her fear that had made her so dizzy.


End file.
